Gun control - again

Politics and Social Issues
201
That's not correct. Everyone does not have a right to own a gun, nor should they. There are already laws preventing individuals with criminal records from owning guns and in some places those with psychiatric illnesses can not own a gun.
That is what I just said. That everyone has a right to possess a gun unless they've committed a crime or been determined to be mentally ill.
What makes gun supporters extreme is their inability to accept the fact that some restrictions are already in place and are not only reasonable but essential. They act as though the constitution does not allow any restrictions when in fact all we are arguing about is where to draw the line.
Some argue that, but most are okay with certain restrictions.
Ill admit that I don't have any numbers to back up my contention that the gun supporters have a disproportionate number of extremists among them but you have to admit that a large portion of violent extremists own guns and even within the mainstream gun lobby which is the NRA many extremist positions have been taken, so it's not just a few loud individuals.
What extreme positions have been taken within the NRA? Also, what violent extremists? The mass murders thus far have all been mentally ill, radical Muslim, and a disgruntled police officer who praised Obama. David Duke, the closest to a right-wing mass murder, used explosives.
202
So, you would restrict those nations from exercising their right to self defense, but not US citizens who have inflicted harm on others?
I never said that. You restrict the rights of murderers, rapists, etc...just the same.
Without background checks how will you ever know if you are selling a gun to some nut case, like Kim Jong-il ? Because he looks oriental? Could you recognize him if you met him in at a gun sales event?
We have background checks. Applying them universally is the issue. I don't have a problem with universal background checks in principle, the issue of enforcement is the concern. I am glad we agree on back ground checks. Now lets make background check a universal requirement for ALL gun purchases, retail, shows, and personal transfer. Obama tried that after a national tragedy and the republicans in congress obstructed every single proposal, including mandatory background checks. This in spite of the will of the great majority of the people, which apparently includes you also.
The fact is, today, in this country, ANYONE can anonymously buy a gun specifically for purposes of killing people, even if they have already been previously convicted of a violent crime or have a record of mental instability, or be underage, or have a record of drug dealing. The only argument that an opponent for gun registration can make is that it will "lead" to confiscation. I have never heard anyone say we should confiscate all guns, ever, anywhere, anytime. The Constitution grants law abiding citizens the right to bear arms, emphasis on "law abiding" citizens who have nothing to fear from the government. The only way to know "for sure" is back ground checks.
Dianne Feinstein said it back in the 1990s, that it she could have gotten the votes, she'd have had legislation forcing everyone to turn in their guns. Also remember that the Constitution does not grant any rights, it protects what are pre-existing rights. The argument that politicians don't want to confiscate all guns doesn't fly with gun rights people, because usually what that leads to is politicians pushing for legislation to outlaw (usually arbitrarily) all sorts of guns, and just arbitrarily leaving certain ones legal for people to purchase.
And that is your perceived threat of confiscation? She did not get the votes right? You just said that no one is taking any guns away but in fact allow ownership of a weapon. And the restrictions are not arbitrarily and do not "leave" a few useless weapons. One can choose from hundreds of models, just not heavy caliber or fully automatic, which are useless for hunting and personal protection in any case.
Tell me, if a state restricted a woman's ability to have an abortion to the first week after getting pregnant, would you accept their claim that they were still protecting the woman's right to choose?
That is an entirely different argument and has nothing to do with possessing a deadly weapon that can kill a mile away from the shooter. Should we allow firearms to be used inside city limits?
My wife is a nurse and in order to practice, she needs to be "registered" and pass a back ground check. There is no mention of that in the Constitution either. Any objections to that law? How about pilots of airplanes, bus drivers, all drivers. Is it not ironic that law enforcement officers have to undergo rigorous training and mental evaluation before they can are allowed on the streets. Yet anyone can wander in and pick up a military weapon without anyone blinking an eye.
All guns are military weapons or functionally identical, the only exception being that some of the versions the military uses have automatic fire capability. Nurses, pilots, etc...are not Constitutionally-protected rights. And even though we require driver's licenses, most people are not trained drivers. If we required people who drive to actually be well-trained at it, that would be impossible to accomplish and we'd disqualify a whole lot of people from driving. Note that larger vehicles like trucks do require special training to drive, but there are few enough such drivers that this can work.
You are missing the point here. These professions must be regulated because they deal with responsibility to the safety of the general public. Perhaps I am out of touch with the rest of the nation but in my state all drivers are required to pass a written and driving test and one is required to renew your license regularly and only in the absence of an accident record it is assumed the driver is competent for renewal without a test. No one is even required to pass a competency test in handling fire arms at time of purchase. And note that your observation about the lack of driving competency has resulted in the death of many thousands each year. Acceptable losses? We seem to apply this attitude to gun ownership. A few bad guys kill 30 kids in a school or shoot a congresswoman and that's just too bad, but that is your risk of living in the US and serving the people.
The argument against a well regulated militia (armed citizens) is completely misplaced and detrimental to our reputation as a civilized, peaceful, well organized, civilized nation.
A civilized, peaceful, well-organized, civilized nation should have no problem with the population having wide possession of arms. Human nature doesn't change. One always has to keep an eye on the government for abuses of power, and seek to manage the problem of criminals well (who can never totally be eliminated).
The nation has no problem with owning guns, it is a constitutionally protected right if you are a law abiding citizen. But how do you verify that information and are there guns that should be restricted? Should people be able to buy fully automatic weapons? How about a truck mounted machine gun like they have in third world countries without governments.
No one talked about armed insurrection, or secession, in spite of the obvious incompetency and sometimes deliberate misleading of the people (war with Iraq because it has weapons of mass destruction) by the Bush administration. Remember the words "crusade" by Bush?
I am assuming you mean the war with Iraq (Iran is a separate country). However, the WMD issue was not any deliberate misleading of the American people from President Bush. That was a lie purported by the Democratic party. The reality is that the Congress never would have supported the war if the evidence clearly showed there were no WMD. Top-ranking members of Congress do not get their intelligence from the White House and they most definitely are not going to make a decision on whether or not to go to war based just on what the White House is saying. And that is why every major Democrat at the time was all over the television networks talking about why Saddam Hussein needed to be removed from power. When the WMDs turned out not to be there and popular opinion turned against the war, the Democrats then insinuated that Bush had lied the country into war, a very cynical thing to do on their part. They also mis-led people into thinking he kept the financing of the wars "off the books," another false claim considering that for supposedly trying to "hide" the true cost of the wars, it was done in plain site, because that is just how the budgeting process works. The budgeting process is very slow, usually starting a year or more before it goes into effect. What the requirements of a war will be a year out are not known at the time, so sometimes the funding for something like Iraq is done via things like appropriations bills and so forth.
Iraq, my error (corrected). And Bush did lie to the country and destroyed a great general in the process. Remember he stood in front of the UN and held up a piece of aluminum pipe, which was NOT usable for nuclear purposes. Do you think our nuclear physicists are that stupid that they would not have informed the world that this was a bogus claim? No one asked and Cheney made sure that was the "smoking gun" Bush was looking for. Then the Bush admin outed a CIA agent, because her husband told the truth about Iraq and the non-presence of WMDs. There never was a budget for the Iraq war, the oil was going to pay for it. Then Bush punctuated his incompetence by declaring "victory", while the war raged on for another decade. Victory indeed. The greatest crime was committed sending our soldiers into battle without proper body armor. I remember the phrase "you make do with what you've got". I can see that when being attacked, but we were the aggressor and just used our soldiers as fodder. But I guess the nuclear threat was "imminent" so we just had to bring home the UN inspectors who had found nothing and remove this dictator, never mind bin Laden, who was the real war criminal.
The Democrats in Congress actively sought to disrupt Bush however, just as the Republicans seek to do with Obama.
Actually this is not true. Congress voted gave Bush extraordinary powers based on his lies, because we respect the office of the president. Note that Obama was one of the few to speak out against this war. Yet Obama is the Hitler?
Never mind the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost in a "war of choice". Perhaps you have forgotten that Bush was called a war criminal by the rest of the world.
I couldn't care less what the "rest of the world" thinks. Most of the "rest of the world" is tyrannical (like Saddam Hussein, the real war criminal whom the U.S. deposed of). For the few parts that aren't, they still do not protect freedoms and rights like the United States does, with a few exceptions.
Again that is a false statement. Saddam Hussein was a criminal but not a "war" criminal. In fact when he was fighting against Iran we helped him win that war. In Iraq we were up against US made weapons. And if you thought that we went after Hussein for being a criminal and a dictator, you are wrong. It was always the oil, remember the stuff that was going to pay for it all so that we didn't need to budget for it and even cut taxes for the richest, most who had investments in the military industrial machine. Is it not a little disconcerting that the only the rich profited and enjoyed lower taxes, while the national debt was doubled under Bush, in spite of inheriting a revenue surplus left by Clinton. I see, Saddam was a bad guy who was not making WMD. And for that we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. But here a bad guy can walk in a gun show and get almost any gun he wants. Do you think this is logical thinking.
Bush was compared to Hitler so many times I can't even keep count. Obama has as well. People doing both are despicable IMO.
Show me. And why is Obama painted as Hitler? Not because of the wars, because those were started by Bush and Obama is winding down the wars. Strange that the rest of the world would award a Nobel peace prize to Obama, while the Tea Party paints him as Hitler.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Benjamin Franklin
203

Many gun owners want to continue to have legal access to semi-automatic rifles and pistols with magazine capacities of over 10 rounds.
That’s because these type weapons are used by police and the military. It gives many people a feeling of power or authority to own these type weapons.
It gives many gun owners who commiserate and spread fear and propaganda, or devour fear and propaganda a justification about a paranoid sense of end times.
A paranoid almost delusional sense of apocalypse. A sense that they are the vanguard of freedom and liberty.
Certainly one of the main arguments of these type people is the statement: “All guns are the same”. “All guns are Equally powerful!” Or “All guns that can be used
by the military can be used by civilians.”
One would make this argument to muddy the waters, so that specific legislation to regulate certain guns would seem unjustified-or arbitrary.
An analogy would be someone arguing for non-regulation of automobiles. A person could say that a Pro Street Rod that ran on Race fuel and had no mufflers and slicks on the back wheels should be just as legal on the streets as a Buick Park Avenue.
The person would argue there is no difference between the 2 autos. They both serve as transportation vehicles. They both have four wheels. And that anybody
can use them.
Logic and well reasoned legislation-not arbitrary whims- have long ago used facts, safety data, and statistics to show that these race type vehicles are not
safe on highways, and cannot be trusted to be used responsibly on the highways.
The argument that all guns are the same, or are equally powerful is laughable at best. The idea that certain types of guns were not designed specifically
to kill people is a joke.
A guns power in relation to doing mass damage is not only measured in it’s calibre, or ammunition type. No, on the contrary, ammo type, or size would not be top
on the list of parameters in measuring a guns power.
A guns ability to hold many rounds of ammunition, it’s ease at quickly reloading many more rounds of ammunition and getting back on target, and it’s ease of
acquiring targets quickly through specialized sights are paramount in the weapons power to kill quickly and efficiently.
So the argument that all guns are the same is quickly extinguished by this standard. There are many guns used by hunters and target shooters that are single shot, and not semi-automatic that wouldn’t come close to the mass killing effect of these weapons like the AR-15 or the AK-47 or the Mini-14.
In fact many of these guns used by hunters or target shooters have more powerful bullets. But this is not wholly relevant to a weapon’s total power in terms of efficiently killing multiple targets fast and repeatedly.
When an army chooses weapons for their infantrymen they choose the gun that is overall powerful. Powerful in the sense I have just described. It has the best balance in weight, portability, ergonomics, ammo capacity, and accuracy. If these weren’t factors, then they would just choose any old guns-like LogicMan is contending, on the basis that all guns are the same. This is clearly and factually not the case. The AR-15 is the prime example of this.
That weapon meets the Army’s criteria. A bolt action rifle with a 4 round capacity does NOT meet the army’s requirements for an Infantry main battle rifle.
The bolt action has to be manually cocked each time it has to be fired. The semi-automatic doesn’t.
The bolt action runs out of ammo after 4 shots. The semi-automatic rifle with detachable magazines runs out of ammo only when it’s detachable magazine runs out.
-And these could hold as many as 100 rounds of ammo. That’s along time and many, many shots before reloading is necessary.
The bolt action has to be reloaded by individually placing the 4 rounds in the gun one at a time. A process that may take several seconds.
The semi-automatic has to be reloaded by pushing a button to release the empty magazine and slapping in a pre-loaded fresh magazine. A process that could take as little as 2 seconds. The shooter now has a weapon that is ready to shoot as many as 100 rounds before having to go through that step again.
All guns are not the same. Obviously! Some guns are are more powerful than others in their ability to kill many things quickly and efficiently.
Someone who makes this argument is giving mis-information in order to blur the lines between guns so that some guns don’t fall under scrutiny.
It’s like saying there’s no difference between a hand-grenade or an atomic bomb. Both are used to kill people and both are bombs. Therefore there is no difference.
And again I would like to add, that this extends beyond just rifles. Similar comparisons can be made between types of shotguns or pistols.

204
And this is due to politicians "abusing their power"? And they are "confiscating guns"?
In New York state and Connecticut in particular, yes, as they bypassed the normal legislative process to ram new legislation through. They took advantage of the Newtown tragedy to pass what, for the most part, was very ideologically-driven and factually-baseless legislation. The entire concept of an "assault weapons ban" I'd say is an abuse of power, just as an "assault speech ban" would be an abuse as well. What you are suggesting is abuse of power is a tactic that is not all that uncommon by partisan interests in various areas. And you still haven't meaningfully supported your assertion that there is no shortage of politicians who will confiscate our weapons. "Assault speech ban"? You mean like making it illegal to threaten someone's life? Or making it illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the government? Oh no! our free speech right has been trampled on! We could be put in jail for threatening assault! What power abusing politician rammed thru that legislation?
205

I wonder if Margaret Hoover is the boss in that relationship?
It must be wonderful to watch your lovely wife grow the baby. I wonder what Margaret is llike in bed.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1206.html
Kirsten Powers article
John Stewart on background check bill
Rush Limbaugh versus John Avlon
John Avlon versus Sarah Palin

I am glad we agree on back ground checks. Now lets make background check a universal requirement for ALL gun purchases, retail, shows, and personal transfer. Obama tried that after a national tragedy and the republicans in congress obstructed every single proposal, including mandatory background checks. This in spite of the will of the great majority of the people, which apparently includes you also.
I said that enforcement is the concern. How to enforce them without creation of a gun registry (which is something Obama's Justice Department included would be necessary to really enforce them). It's actually the Democrats in Congress that obstructed proposals like the "assault weapons ban" and "high capacity magazine" ban, as Harry Reid killed those, but the universal background checks were killed by both, although more Republicans than Democrats. However, I do not believe that 90% of Americans supported them for a few reasons: 1) We do not know the methodology of how that statistic was arrived at. 2) Most people answering the question may not have the requisite knowledge of the issue to know what they are really answering 3) In the abstract, people can agree on such a policy, but when it comes to actual legislative proposals, agreeing on a particular policy does not mean agreement on particular legislation
And that is your perceived threat of confiscation? She did not get the votes right? You just said that no one is taking any guns away but in fact allow ownership of a weapon. And the restrictions are not arbitrarily and do not "leave" a few useless weapons. One can choose from hundreds of models, just not heavy caliber or fully automatic, which are useless for hunting and personal protection in any case.
That's with the existing federal law. With her proposed "assault weapons ban," she was seeking to arbitrarily ban all sorts of guns.
That is an entirely different argument and has nothing to do with possessing a deadly weapon that can kill a mile away from the shooter. Should we allow firearms to be used inside city limits?
It's not an entirely different argument. It's an argument about another fundamental right, and an example of how said right can be essentially outlawed but just by leaving a small bit of room, the people mostly outlawing it can try to claim they are not doing so. Of course and we do. Some cities are very strict about it and for awhile tried to outlaw guns entirely (Chicago, Washington, D.C.), but since the SCOTUS rulings of DC v Heller and MacDonald v Chicago, no city can completely outlaw guns.
You are missing the point here. These professions must be regulated because they deal with responsibility to the safety of the general public. Perhaps I am out of touch with the rest of the nation but in my state all drivers are required to pass a written and driving test and one is required to renew your license regularly and only in the absence of an accident record it is assumed the driver is competent for renewal without a test. No one is even required to pass a competency test in handling fire arms at time of purchase.
A very easy written and driving test. And renewal of the license happens every certain number of years.
And note that your observation about the lack of driving competency has resulted in the death of many thousands each year. Acceptable losses? We seem to apply this attitude to gun ownership. A few bad guys kill 30 kids in a school or shoot a congresswoman and that's just too bad, but that is your risk of living in the US and serving the people.
Yes, lack of driving competency results in lots of deaths each year. Cars I believe would be far more regulated if they were not required for society to function. If society could function without cars, then the current traffic death rate in the United States would be seen as a tragedy and a call for strict automobile control laws. the vast majority of gun violence in the U.S. happens in the inner cities due to gang warfare, with handguns. These mass shootings are a newer phenomenon, so there is something else going on that is causing them. There is always some risk inherent in a free society. One cannot have both freedom and security.
The nation has no problem with owning guns, it is a constitutionally protected right if you are a law abiding citizen. But how do you verify that information and are there guns that should be restricted? Should people be able to buy fully automatic weapons? How about a truck mounted machine gun like they have in third world countries without governments.
Machine guns make for an interesting debate, because on the one hand, you have people who claim that technically, semiautomatic is more deadly than automatic fire. From a technical standpoint, having automatic fire weapons as legal would be probably be fine. But from a public relations and media standpoint, with the perception that automatic fire weapons are significantly more deadly, it would probably never fly. But this debate is entirely academic now. Truck-mounted machine guns do not constitute "arms."
No one talked about armed insurrection, or secession, in spite of the obvious incompetency and sometimes deliberate misleading of the people (war with Iraq because it has weapons of mass destruction) by the Bush administration. Remember the words "crusade" by Bush?
Iraq, my error (corrected). And Bush did lie to the country and destroyed a great general in the process. Remember he stood in front of the UN and held up a piece of aluminum pipe, which was NOT usable for nuclear purposes. Do you think our nuclear physicists are that stupid that they would not have informed the world that this was a bogus claim? No one asked and Cheney made sure that was the "smoking gun" Bush was looking for. Then the Bush admin outed a CIA agent, because her husband told the truth about Iraq and the non-presence of WMDs.
If Bush really had lied, then the Congress would have caught it. And the claim about Valerie Plame's husband supposedly exposing the Bush administration in a lie was debunked long ago.
There never was a budget for the Iraq war, the oil was going to pay for it. Then Bush punctuated his incompetence by declaring "victory", while the war raged on for another decade. Victory indeed.
There could never have been a full-on pre-planned budget for the Iraq war as no one knew for sure how much the war would end up costing. The notion that oil would pay for it doesn't hold, because the United States did not invade seeking oil and never got a drop of Iraq's oil on its own. It established the government and then let Iraq auction off its own oil. There were far easier countries to invade if the United States was mainly after oil (like Bahrain or Kuwait). Bush didn't declare victory, he declared an end to the type of military operations that had been occurring.
The greatest crime was committed sending our soldiers into battle without proper body armor. I remember the phrase "you make do with what you've got". I can see that when being attacked, but we were the aggressor and just used our soldiers as fodder. But I guess the nuclear threat was "imminent" so we just had to bring home the UN inspectors who had found nothing and remove this dictator, never mind bin Laden, who was the real war criminal.
Things like the body armor argument always get me, as the Democratic party are the ones who are always seeking to reduce the defense budget, and then they act shocked when the military is lacking equipment. Look at President Obama in the third presidential debate. He said repeatedly that we spend more than the next ten nations combined on defense. Then he says that Mitt Romney is recommending a defense budget that the Defense Department hasn't asked for. It doesn't occur to him that: 1) The reason the U.S. outspends the next ten nations combined is because of how little they each spend, not that we over-spend. They can do this because of how much the U.S. spends. It is the U.S. that underwrites global trade and global security and keeps the sea lanes open. If anything, our military is always under-funded (the Marine Corps for example always has had to make due with older equipment). 2) The Defense Department doesn't ask for a larger budget because it sees the budget outlook for the next decade or so and sees the writing on the wall, that the money just isn't there for a larger budget. But all of the branches of the military could very much make due with a significantly larger budget. The Army has driven its vehicles way beyond what their original intended service life was supposed to be, and because of having to bolt on armor to the vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, this has led to a lot of additional wear and tear on the vehicles. The Marine Corps doubly-so, as they have been making due with older vehicles from the beginning. The Air Force is flying older aircraft and the Navy is under-funded as well. If Democrats do not want our soldiers sent to war without proper equipment, then they need to stop arguing about how we do not need this or that sized military budget in peacetime.
Actually this is not true. Congress voted gave Bush extraordinary powers based on his lies, because we respect the office of the president. Note that Obama was one of the few to speak out against this war. Yet Obama is the Hitler?
Wingnuts on both sides always compare the other side's president to Hitler. And what extraordinary powers did Bush get? Obama has utilized drones far more than Bush ever did, for example, and also had to be taken to task by Senator Rand Paul over whether they actually have the ability to use a drone to kill an American citizen outside of the country. cont'd....
206

cont’d…

Again that is a false statement. Saddam Hussein was a criminal but not a "war" criminal. In fact when he was fighting against Iran we helped him win that war. In Iraq we were up against US made weapons. And if you thought that we went after Hussein for being a criminal and a dictator, you are wrong. It was always the oil, remember the stuff that was going to pay for it all so that we didn't need to budget for it and even cut taxes for the richest, most who had investments in the military industrial machine.
Saddam Hussein was far more than any "criminal" and yes he was a war criminal. He used chemical weapons to kill hundreds of thousands and was a tyrant. This sort of sounds like a cliché, "Oh, he was a tyrant..." it's kind of like off-handedly saying, "Yeah, Mao Zedong killed 60 million people..." you have to stop and think what monsters people like this are and the terror and torture that they brought on people. We only helped him to serve as a check on Iran. That is just a problem that happens in foreign policy sometimes, where you cannot choose between good or evil, but instead just the lesser of two evils. It never had a thing to do with the oil, as invading a country like Iraq for oil would have been the height of idiocy. And Bush did not cut taxes for the richest, he could taxes across-the-board, for everyone. All of the income tax brackets saw a reduction in their tax rates. The Child Income Tax Credit was also doubled. It was a lie on the part of the Democrats to claim all those years that Bush only cut taxes for the rich. If you notice, after President Obama was elected and had promised to end the "Bush tax cuts," the language shifted to, "End the Bush tax cuts for those that make $250K and up." Well wait a minute. We went through years of being told that the Bush tax cuts were only for the rich in the first place. So what's that about? Because in reality, ending all the Bush tax cuts would mean a significant tax increase on the middle-class and poorer people.
Is it not a little disconcerting that the only the rich profited and enjoyed lower taxes, while the national debt was doubled under Bush, in spite of inheriting a revenue surplus left by Clinton.
The national debt as a percentage of the GDP was not doubled under Bush and the so-called "Clinton surplus" had nothing to do with Clinton but rather the Dot Com bubble and the fact that Clinton signed the legislation that the Republicans sent up to him (welfare reform, capital gains tax cut). The military budget had also been slashed (though primarily under Bush Sr.) due to the Soviet Union breaking apart.
I see, Saddam was a bad guy who was not making WMD. And for that we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. But here a bad guy can walk in a gun show and get almost any gun he wants. Do you think this is logical thinking.
The death estimates for Iraqi civilians you have to take with grain of salt, as some of them are blown way out of proportion. And the U.S. did not kill such people, Al-Qaeda decided to start a war with the U.S. while in Iraq. I do not at all see how U.S. foreign policy has anything to do with gun control policy. And Hussein had in the past pursued WMD, had shown he was perfectly willing to use WMD, and he had the ability to rapidly begin production of WMD as well as the infrastructure was there. It is also possible that there were WMD, but that they were moved out of the country at the last minute.
Show me. And why is Obama painted as Hitler? Not because of the wars, because those were started by Bush and Obama is winding down the wars. Strange that the rest of the world would award a Nobel peace prize to Obama, while the Tea Party paints him as Hitler.
Do a Google search for "Bush Hitler." As for Obama, people would compare him to Hitler for the same reasons they'd compare Bush to him. As for the Nobel Peace Prize going to him, that was a joke and everyone knows it. The Nobel committee pretty much blew their credibility straight out of the water there. They awarded that prize to a man who had at the time done absolutely nothing to deserve it, and thus far has still not done anything to deserve it. The policies of Obama's that have worked best are precisely those that the Nobel committee types hate, such as using the drones to kill and having Osama bin Laden shot in the face.
207
Many gun owners want to continue to have legal access to semi-automatic rifles and pistols with magazine capacities of over 10 rounds. That's because these type weapons are used by police and the military. It gives many people a feeling of power or authority to own these type weapons. It gives many gun owners who commiserate and spread fear and propaganda, or devour fear and propaganda a justification about a paranoid sense of end times. A paranoid almost delusional sense of apocalypse. A sense that they are the vanguard of freedom and liberty.
Or it's just their right to possess arms, the basic tools of war, to be able to protect themselves and/or their families in the event that other individuals seek to make war on them. Police, BTW, are civilians too, not military.
Certainly one of the main arguments of these type people is the statement: "All guns are the same". "All guns are Equally powerful!" Or "All guns that can be used by the military can be used by civilians." One would make this argument to muddy the waters, so that specific legislation to regulate certain guns would seem unjustified-or arbitrary. An analogy would be someone arguing for non-regulation of automobiles. A person could say that a Pro Street Rod that ran on Race fuel and had no mufflers and slicks on the back wheels should be just as legal on the streets as a Buick Park Avenue. The person would argue there is no difference between the 2 autos. They both serve as transportation vehicles. They both have four wheels. And that anybody can use them. Logic and well reasoned legislation-not arbitrary whims- have long ago used facts, safety data, and statistics to show that these race type vehicles are not safe on highways, and cannot be trusted to be used responsibly on the highways. The argument that all guns are the same, or are equally powerful is laughable at best. The idea that certain types of guns were not designed specifically to kill people is a joke.
Racing cars are not the same as regular street cars. But guns used by the military are for the most part identical to the ones civilians use. And no, guns are not designed specifically to kill humans, because humans are animals. If it can kill a human, it can kill an animal of similar size and weight of a human and vice-versa. All guns are not the same, but between military, law enforcement, and civilians, they all use the same basic types.
A guns power in relation to doing mass damage is not only measured in it's calibre, or ammunition type. No, on the contrary, ammo type, or size would not be top on the list of parameters in measuring a guns power. A guns ability to hold many rounds of ammunition, it's ease at quickly reloading many more rounds of ammunition and getting back on target, and it's ease of acquiring targets quickly through specialized sights are paramount in the weapons power to kill quickly and efficiently.
This is completely made up on your part. How "powerful" a gun is has to do with things like what cartridge does it fire.
So the argument that all guns are the same is quickly extinguished by this standard. There are many guns used by hunters and target shooters that are single shot, and not semi-automatic that wouldn't come close to the mass killing effect of these weapons like the AR-15 or the AK-47 or the Mini-14. In fact many of these guns used by hunters or target shooters have more powerful bullets. But this is not wholly relevant to a weapon's total power in terms of efficiently killing multiple targets fast and repeatedly. When an army chooses weapons for their infantrymen they choose the gun that is overall powerful. Powerful in the sense I have just described. It has the best balance in weight, portability, ergonomics, ammo capacity, and accuracy. If these weren't factors, then they would just choose any old guns-like LogicMan is contending, on the basis that all guns are the same. This is clearly and factually not the case. The AR-15 is the prime example of this.
You are distorting what I have said. I never said that "all guns are the same." I have said that the guns used by civilians, law enforcement, and the military are for the most part the same.
That weapon meets the Army's criteria. A bolt action rifle with a 4 round capacity does NOT meet the army's requirements for an Infantry main battle rifle. The bolt action has to be manually cocked each time it has to be fired. The semi-automatic doesn't. The bolt action runs out of ammo after 4 shots. The semi-automatic rifle with detachable magazines runs out of ammo only when it's detachable magazine runs out. -And these could hold as many as 100 rounds of ammo. That's along time and many, many shots before reloading is necessary. The bolt action has to be reloaded by individually placing the 4 rounds in the gun one at a time. A process that may take several seconds. The semi-automatic has to be reloaded by pushing a button to release the empty magazine and slapping in a pre-loaded fresh magazine. A process that could take as little as 2 seconds. The shooter now has a weapon that is ready to shoot as many as 100 rounds before having to go through that step again. All guns are not the same. Obviously! Some guns are are more powerful than others in their ability to kill many things quickly and efficiently. Someone who makes this argument is giving mis-information in order to blur the lines between guns so that some guns don't fall under scrutiny. It's like saying there's no difference between a hand-grenade or an atomic bomb. Both are used to kill people and both are bombs. Therefore there is no difference. And again I would like to add, that this extends beyond just rifles. Similar comparisons can be made between types of shotguns or pistols.
Some bolt-actions have detachable box magazines too. The types of guns you would limit people to though would not be very good for self-defense purposes.
208
What you are suggesting is abuse of power is a tactic that is not all that uncommon by partisan interests in various areas.
Yes, Republicans are not above abusing power as well.
And you still haven't meaningfully supported your assertion that there is no shortage of politicians who will confiscate our weapons.
Look at some of the legislative proposals put forward by various politicians in various states. Also look at what was proposed by the Connecticut and New York state (some very extreme proposals that were just reduced by the Republicans in the state legislature). Maryland jumped on the drive to outlaw guns arbitrarily and California is moving towards such legislation as well. As for outright confiscation, the politicians are only limited there in the sense that the logistics required to do it would be too much. But they nonetheless require people to register such "assault weapons" with the state who bought them before the ban was enacted.
"Assault speech ban"? You mean like making it illegal to threaten someone's life? Or making it illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the government? Oh no! our free speech right has been trampled on! We could be put in jail for threatening assault! What power abusing politician rammed thru that legislation?
No, I mean "assault speech ban" as in politicians get to define "assault speech" however they want. Like let's say any speech critical of the government, and the politicians claim that their legislation protects the rights of legitimate authors and writers. So comedies, romance novels, sports journalism, etc...all is fine, but anything critical of the government constitutes "assault speech." Many would point out that the right to free speech is not about entertainment or sporting purposes. "Assault speech" or "hate speech" laws are very dangerous in this sense when the politicians get to define these terms to be whatever they want them to be.
209

So Logicman, I take it that since you, now state that confiscating guns is logistically impossible, that you would be willing to admit that your statement
“…there is no shortage of politicians who will take advantage of any opportunity to abuse their power and confiscate people’s guns." is a wee bit paranoid, as suggested by another poster?
Re: your points about politicians limiting our speech. Sure, legislators can make laws limiting our speech and can make laws limiting our access to guns. (Although this requires some level of consent of the governed if they wish to remain in office long.) But any laws they make can ultimately be challenged as being unconstitutional.
Gun advocates and advocates of gun control, don’t get to decide what is Constitutional. The Supreme Court does that. Clearly there are some limits on gun ownership, just as there are some limits on speech that are in keeping with the Constitution.

210
No, I mean "assault speech ban" as in politicians get to define "assault speech" however they want. Like let's say any speech critical of the government, and the politicians claim that their legislation protects the rights of legitimate authors and writers. So comedies, romance novels, sports journalism, etc...all is fine, but anything critical of the government constitutes "assault speech." ...
Oh my. It is about as likely that Bigfoot actually exists, as it is that legislators could actually get a law passed that criminalizes criticsm of the government. And in that extraordinarily unlikely event, such a law would be struck down, anyway. And as much as some fanatical gun advocates seem to want to believe that "Obama's going to take our guns away!" It is either an outright manipulative lie, or it is pure paranoia.
211

Anyway, in terms of REALITY, the only thing that is on the table in the near term, is whether a law will be passed that requires a waiting period for the purchase of guns, so that criminals and crazies can be weeded out.
If no such law is passed, it will be in large part due to the NRA. Because, if the NRA wanted such a law passed it could be done within a week.

212

Sorry Logic Man,
Your response to my post is so full of inconsistencies and speculations and misinformation that I am giving up.
I am going out to buy myself a KPV. Boy will I be safe.

213
Sorry Logic Man, Your response to my post is so full of inconsistencies and speculations and misinformation that I am giving up. I am going out to buy myself a KPV. Boy will I be safe.
Yeah, I stopped responding to him too. He obviously is only interested in spreading propaganda and lies. He's real good at telling people they're wrong. That's one thing.
214

We do agree on gun back ground checks and that is a positive thing. However then he rejects the notion of a registry and casually notes that even existing back ground checks are not enforced by all the states.
So, if I am a criminal and want to buy a gun, I go to the state which does not enforce existing laws and buy myself a gun. Why have laws if they can easily be circumvented?

215

I’ve stuck strictly with the weapon discussion here. I don’t want to get into the background check debate.

  1. It’s a no-brainer.
  2. It’s coming. That’s light lifting.
    The heavy lift is getting specific types of guns banned.
    I don’t know if you’ve seen LogicMan’s replies to my points with him, but he is hell bent on making sure there is no distinction between gun types.
    He doesn’t fear background checks, although I doubt he really agrees with you on background checks as much as you think he does.
    He wants to make sure millions of insecure males can continue to have a military style weapon to cradle at night and fantasize about some Hollywood type
    Revolution.
216
So Logicman, I take it that since you, now state that confiscating guns is logistically impossible, that you would be willing to admit that your statement “...there is no shortage of politicians who will take advantage of any opportunity to abuse their power and confiscate people’s guns." is a wee bit paranoid, as suggested by another poster?
Nope, because it has happened (New Orleans for example). And as said, the NY state police said they'd enforce it if Governor Cuomo decided to do it. In the end though, it would be logistically impossible to get all of the guns right now, so I do not see them doing it any time soon. I fully believe they would do so if they could however.
Re: your points about politicians limiting our speech. Sure, legislators can make laws limiting our speech and can make laws limiting our access to guns. (Although this requires some level of consent of the governed if they wish to remain in office long.) But any laws they make can ultimately be challenged as being unconstitutional. Gun advocates and advocates of gun control, don't get to decide what is Constitutional. The Supreme Court does that. Clearly there are some limits on gun ownership, just as there are some limits on speech that are in keeping with the Constitution.
Depends. The Court can be wrong. It has been wrong before. Recent decisions have been 5-4 on things.
Oh my. It is about as likely that Bigfoot actually exists, as it is that legislators could actually get a law passed that criminalizes criticsm of the government. And in that extraordinarily unlikely event, such a law would be struck down, anyway.
Exactly. I wasn't saying it is likely, I was using it as an example. It wouldn't fly because people would see right through it. However, there have been other attempts, such as for example the campaign-finance law McCain-Feingold, which the Court struck down. The thing is, these same politicians proceed to try to ban "military guns" while protecting guns for "hunting and sporting" purposes. The right to keep and bear arms is no more about hunting and sporting than free speech is about entertainment.
And as much as some fanatical gun advocates seem to want to believe that "Obama's going to take our guns away!" It is either an outright manipulative lie, or it is pure paranoia.
He pushed for an "assault weapons ban," which means he was trying to take away the availability of guns, so no, it is not paranoia. Just because he wasn't seeking outright confiscation doesn't mean that what he was seeking didn't constitute a form of taking away something. If the government decided to ban the further publishing of certain books, would you accept the argument, "The government is not coming to take away anybody's books. There will be no book confiscation. So stop with the paranoia." Well to me, by outlawing the further production of said books, that constitutes a form of "taking" books from the public.
217
We do agree on gun back ground checks and that is a positive thing. However then he rejects the notion of a registry and casually notes that even existing back ground checks are not enforced by all the states.
Where did I say that existing background checks are not enforced by all the states? And of course I reject the notion of a registry. Firearms ownership is a right, not a privilege. The government has no business forcing people to register the guns they own with the State. Furthermore, historically, gun registries have always lead to gun confiscation.
218
I've stuck strictly with the weapon discussion here. I don't want to get into the background check debate. 1. It's a no-brainer. 2. It's coming. That's light lifting.
It is not a "no-brainer" because of the enforcement issues. And as we have seen recently, the government is plenty prone to abusing its authority.
The heavy lift is getting specific types of guns banned. I don't know if you've seen LogicMan's replies to my points with him, but he is hell bent on making sure there is no distinction between gun types.
As I have explained numerous times, that is not the case.
He doesn't fear background checks, although I doubt he really agrees with you on background checks as much as you think he does. He wants to make sure millions of insecure males can continue to have a military style weapon to cradle at night and fantasize about some Hollywood type Revolution.
You need to be more open-minded about why people own guns.
219
We do agree on gun back ground checks and that is a positive thing. However then he rejects the notion of a registry and casually notes that even existing back ground checks are not enforced by all the states.
Where did I say that existing background checks are not enforced by all the states? And of course I reject the notion of a registry. Firearms ownership is a right, not a privilege. The government has no business forcing people to register the guns they own with the State. Furthermore, historically, gun registries have always lead to gun confiscation. Why? And what would be the possibility of that here in the US? I believe that one positive thing would be for manufacturers to test fire their firearms and send the test bullets along with make, model, serial # to the Federal Department of Justice, with access protection, except for matching crime bullets with the data base. It does not identify the owner, but in case of a crime, if the bullet markings can identify the weapon and allow police to trace the gun, wherever it leads, it is a good thing.
220
Why? And what would be the possibility of that here in the US?
Regarding why, I just explained why. Because you do not force people to register regarding something that is a right. Regarding the possibility of confiscation, at the federal level, I'd say pretty low, at the state and local levels, I'd say the risks are in the aftermath of mass shootings or natural disasters. Long term regarding the federal government, my attitude is who knows, as no one can predict the future.
I believe that one positive thing would be for manufacturers to test fire their firearms and send the test bullets along with make, model, serial # to the Federal Department of Justice, with access protection, except for matching crime bullets with the data base. It does not identify the owner, but in case of a crime, if the bullet markings can identify the weapon and allow police to trace the gun, wherever it leads, it is a good thing.
Testing the firearm wouldn't do anything to the bullet to identify what particular gun it was. California is enacting a law that requires manufacturers to create a special mark on the firing pin to mark each projectile fired to make such weapons more easy to trace, but the problem is that while it is costly for manufacturers to do it, criminals can bypass it quite easily by filing the firing pin. Also, they could just use a revolver or purchase a gun illegally that doesn't have these special firing pins.