Getting Older and Changing Attitudes

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Even if a gun could be made entirely of plastic...springs, barrel and all...there's still the matter of the ammunition passing through a metal detector. So far, I haven't seen any technology for plastic ammo that provides more than superfluous wounding capability.

Mandatory "competency" training/tests for exercising a fundamental, Constitutionally protected right?

In a perfect world, we'd all be competent at everything before venturing forth into the street...but unfortunately, it ain't a perfect world...and we're only human.

Maybe we should be required to take and pass parenting competency courses before we're allowed to reproduce.

Maybe cooking competency courses and basic firefighting classes before we can buy an electric or gas range. Those things can be pretty dangerous, ya know.

How about competency exams for jogging on public streets?

How about we just drop that whole silly liberty/land of the free notion and ask the government for permission for everything we do?

What part of "Shall not be infringed" are you struggling with?
 
The only way to keep guns out of the wrong hands is to keep them out of all hands and people who don't obey the law are always the hardest to control.
 
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The only way to keep guns out of the wrong hands is to keep them out of all hands and people who don't obey the law are always the hardest to control.

Criminals...by definition...don't obey laws and generally do as they please.

Cocaine is illegal. Heroin is illegal. Marijuana is illegal. Drunk driving is illegal. Rape, murder, and robbery are all illegal. Doesn't seem to make a whit of difference to tens of thousands of people...every day of the year.

Why would anyone with half a brain believe that another, tighter restriction on gun ownership would cause a criminal to turn them in and forever cease and desist using guns in pursuit of his criminal activities?
 
The word 'license' as Noah Webster states:" a formal permission to do something; especially authorization by law to do some specified thing.' The Second Amendment states: (3rd clause to end), "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Mr. Webstaer states that, 'infringed', is: 'encroach or trespass on, (to infringe upon their right to privacy). The Constitution, and your theory of 'federal licensing' are not compatible. There are too-many-numbers of gun laws already on the books. You already have the FBI doing national background checks, ever since Oct. 1998. (I was working in a sporting goods store when that fiasco started off, in the middle of elk season.) There is a sitting President, that has stated that he would do away with the 2nd Amendment, as he has done away with a number of The Bill of Rights, because it displeases him!

I applaud your realization of what you have said, and written, and your change of your perspective. Keep going, you'll get there.
 
IMHO Trying to legislate out stupidity only tends to tee off those that are intelligent enough to understand the problem in the first place.:banghead:

Oh and if you don't want to be logged off all the time check the remember me box when you sign in.:)
 
shockwave said:
There's an incredible blindness here.

The average High Road member wants zero restrictions on ownership, wants - demands - open carry, and would prefer fewer restrictions on full-auto firearms. Coolio.

This person also, however, believes that every gun owner will be the jovial hail-fellow-well-met overweight sweating clown in the next bay over at the shooting range they frequent.

But do remember that some vicious gang-banger would be able to snag a Mossberg 500 PGO and carry it openly into your convenience store and open fire. Legally. And not a dang thing you can do about it.

Violent, lawless gang members, with jackets and colors and so forth, with Glocks and suchlike strapped on their hips. Marching up in your face and demanding $20 "or else."

Maybe, and I could be in the minority, but gun laws as they are currently structured seem to prevent this kind of thing. Maybe, and I could be wrong, but our current laws seem to allow we law-abiding citizens to carry and make it hard for the BGs to do so. Maybe severe relaxation of current law would be a mistake.
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Um. You seem to think legalization of open carry also means that crime would be legal. That's a patently false assumption.
 
The problem with gun laws is that they treat everyone like the least common denominator or the gang banger mentioned above. I'm pretty sure it is already illegal to threaten or rob anyone.
 
Owen Sparks writes:

There is absolutely nothing that you can do with a firearm to harm other people or their property that is not already covered by an existing law.
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This, guys and gals, is sig material here.
 
Maybe, and I could be in the minority, but gun laws as they are currently structured seem to prevent this kind of thing. Maybe, and I could be wrong, but our current laws seem to allow we law-abiding citizens to carry and make it hard for the BGs to do so. Maybe severe relaxation of current law would be a mistake.
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Ummm...no.

Here's VT's laws, to the extent that I know.
1.___________


Oh, thats right, open carry, conceal, buy a gun from your neighbor up the street and have the only parties involved be the one with the gun, and the one with the money.
You won't get much closer to untainted 2A.
And for all the freedom, as it was meant to be, Vermont has some of the lowest violent crime per capita in the United States.

Bullies work with fear. Don't fear the bully, and they lose their power, and think twice about what they're doing. Same with armed criminals I think.
If I were going to rob a store, I'd be a lot more comfortable about if I knew I was the only one with a gun. The more (potentially) armed people I might run into, the less comfortable with the armed robbery thing I would be.
 
Gun control should be real simple

Have you ever been convicted of a felony involving violence, fraud, illegal drugs, human trafficking, larceny, or sexual exploitation?

Have you been convicted of a violent crime including but not limitted to child abuse, domestic abuse, assault, sexual assault, or rape?

Have you been found or adjudicated mentally incompetent by a court, court officer, or qualifying medical doctor?

If yes to the previous is the finding still binding?

After that there is only one more thing I would add. If you want to carry open or concealed in public you need to be able to score 70 or better with ten shots on a B-34 target. Keep all ten in the scoring area (at 25 feet) and you're on your way.
 
There is something about living in a metropolitan area that generally makes a person antigun. I work in a city and live on a farm about 70 miles away. All my neighbors are pro 2nd amendment. Most of my coworkers in the city are antigun. I guess the city folks think they need government involvement in all facets of their life whereas the country folks want much less government in their life.
I grew up in a city and was pretty liberal in my beliefs. Adulthood brought me to the country and then to conservative values. Gun ownership is considered a common sense thing in a rural area. We hunt, protect livestock, and enjoy target practice and find it amusing when we hear of someone who does not own a firearm. In the city, I hear people say "Why do you need a firearm?". They simply don't understand. I had a rabid skunk in my front yard about two weeks ago. I guess if I lived in the city, I would have to call some government official to come and rescue me.
 
Regarding changing attitudes as you grow older (and wiser), remember the famous quotation of Winston Churchill (I may not have the words exactly correct): "If you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative by the time you are 40 you have no brain."
 
Conservatism today as practiced is flawed, but so is liberalism. I think that minimal, CYA regulations should be in place. And no, I'm not of the left but centre, and I believe that it all is a tradeoff. To prove my point, I will live in Canada and HK after College and I will have no problem at all with Canada's current regulation. Both systems, no guns and guns work equally well, but in pro guns it requires armed citizens to outnumber armed criminals.
 
Your early beliefs, quoted in the OP, are often demonized on this website but they’re not inherently bad. They’re just a bit naïve.

jahwarrior said:
do you want the potential child molester/serial rapist/drug dealer/mass murder to own a handgun? and AR15? i know i don't. i believe in background checks.
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The answer of course is no. Allowing criminals to have access to firearms is actually a bad idea. Admittedly, criminals will always have access to firearms regardless of how many restrictions are put in place. That doesn’t mean we should make it easy for them though.

I don’t mind background checks. Not to look for potential child molesters/serial rapists/drug dealers/mass murders, which is impossible, but to screen out convicted versions of the above. It won’t stop them but it will limit their options. It doesn’t interfere with my ability to own firearms and I believe it probably does save some lives. It’s an imperfect system for an imperfect world.

What’s the alternative; unrestricted access for everyone? Is that really a better option? If so, how is it better? Is there some way to find a balance?

Those are honest questions by the way.


I have a feeling I'm going to regret posting this.
 
Quote:

>I think that minimal, CYA regulations should be in place.<

They are, and have been since 1968.

Purchase permit from the Sheriff in your county of residence required for handgun purchase.

Form 4473 for all cartridge arm purchases, with lying on the form being a felony.

Instant, national background check added for long gun purchases several years ago.

Felony for straw purchases added more recently.

Note that none of the above have kept the bad guys from getting their hands on guns.
They're not going to hassle with those legal trivialities. They're going to go find their guns the same way they go score their drugs. Only if they're impatient will they not get the exact gun that they want.

Accept that these "Ruling Elite" politicos who champion gun control aren't concerned with gun control or crime control. It's not about gun/crime control. It's about control.
Period.

If you wish to control a population, the first thing that you have to do is take away any efficient means of resisting. That's paramount. Make them helpless by imposing an insurmountable disparity of force. How many people...even enmasse...are going to charge or even resist a platoon armed only with knives, clubs, and pitchforks?

As the saying goes:

"In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king."

Another one:

"They may promise to govern well, but they mean to govern. They may promise to be good masters...but they mean to be masters."
 
getting older and changing attitudes

Some of my attitudes have not changed since the 1960s: I grew up in a tough neighborhood in a "dry" county and knew the location of seven bootleggers by the time I was eighteen. Had no faith in prohibition working at all. And on the gun control hoopla of the 1960s--Senator Dodd and "mail order guns", Carl Bakal "This Very Day a Gun May Kill You" and "NO Right to Bear Arms"--I saw a huge disconnect between hype and reality: most criminals did not have guns, those who did got them black market, most people who owned guns were not criminals, but the proposed gun laws demonized and affected them, not the criminal types. (On mail order guns: if you bought a gun by mail order, they had traceable records of your name, address, signed check or money order: no street thug who I knew or who endangered me bought guns by mail order.)

I have changed my attitudes on some things based on learning: two city detectives and a corrections officer convinced me in the 1970s that a handgun for self defense was a good idea; before that, I was a sporting purposes only Elmer Fudd wabbit hunter with a side interest in civilian marksmanship and military history.

Most people--and James Wright ("Under the Gun") discovered this between 1977 and 1981--believe they have a right to own a gun, accept moderate regulation aimed at misusers, but don't expect gun control to bring about a crime or violence free utopia. Wright discovered that analysis of polls showed that the majority of Americans would not support gun control that went too far--even in the very polls commissioned by gun banners who claimed a 80% support for their position. Most folks support controls kinda on the level of card ID checks to buy beer, but not controls on the level of prohibition. My experience has been that prohibition leads to a uncontrollable black market and all kinds of corruption. Anti-gunners like Bakal in 1959 envisioned deaths due to shootings receding to the vanishing point as all the guns were rounded up--in my view as likely as America becoming an alcohol-free utopia under the Volstead Act 1919-1933. My cynical view of gun control is also colored by the 1950s crusade against comic books and "violent" entertainment like "Popeye", "Superman" and "The Three Stooges" (Fredric Wertham, "Seduction of the Innocents"). I began to see it all as scapegoating or voodoo criminology by the early 1960s and saw the advocates as well-meaning but dangerous ideologues, all the more dangerous because the were crusading from a self-righteous position.
 
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Don't reckon my opinion has changed much over the years. I've always been for freedom and liberty. Unfortunately, my opinions seem to be valued less and less over the years by those in power.
 
OP - I understand what you're saying.

I did something similar a few months ago, and couldn't believe some of the things I used to say on gun forums.

7 years ago, I was little better than a troll on some forums - spouting complete nonsense about things, some of which I had never even experienced. I felt so bad about it, that I posted a public apology on that forum.
 
i love how all threads on this forum go off the rails!

:D

it's funny talking to friends who i haven't spoken to in years. some of them have literally recoiled from me, and never spoken to me again. some of them are just shocked, and want to know what i did with the old Jah.

i left NYC many, many years ago. everyone i've reconnected to (thanks, Facebook :rolleyes:) from my old neighborhood has pretty much stayed the same, while i've moved forward, and been exposed to different cultures here in America, and in other countries.

i think my parents are the most shocked, but pleased. i went from being a nihilistic punk kid, to a smarmy young man with liberal leanings, to a guy who decided to be open minded, to an older young guy who is decidely libertarian, and actually cares about the world he lives in, mostly because he has kids to think about.
 
I think part of the change of attitude, as we age, must be a physical thing as it seems to happen to many of us. My first vote was for McGovern as governor of South Dakota. After the Navy and 12 uears in the defense world Ronald Reagan was just barely conservative enought. Now at 70 I find it difficult to not be a raving right wing lunatic.
 
When I see some of the damages some gun owners do the property on some shooting ranges when no one else is around I really do believe that there are some dumb asses that should really not be allowed to own a firearm. Same for those who shoot road signs from a moving vehicle (or simply shoot road signs).
 
My attitude towards gun control hasn't really changed much in forty years. They were no more or no less than tools when I was too small to shoot them, and that's exactly how I see them today.

One thing that has has changed in my way of thinking within the past few years, is understanding that getting my county sheriffs "pemission" to carry one concealed would save me a lot of headache should I need to use it.

1911 Tuner said:
Accept that these "Ruling Elite" politicos who champion gun control aren't concerned with gun control or crime control. It's not about gun/crime control. It's about control.
Period.

As true a saying as there is!

OP jahwarrior said:
"i love how all threads on this forum go off the rails!"

You did ask for other opinions, eh?
 
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1911Tuner:

Lets agree to disagree. Can't an honest guy voice his own opinion with getting bashed? Especially by a moderator.
 
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