Acceptable New Gun Legislation

[AKMtnRunner]

Now that discussions are going several times around, time to take a poll.

 

[Skribs]

All guns are legal to walk in and buy, and are taxed at the same rate as other retail products.

Guns are kept out of the hands of violent criminals by keeping them in prison.

Violence is deterred through removal of the revolving door criminal system, and prevented by better social programs.

It will not be perfect, but it would be more effective than a gun ban and would infringe on my rights less.

This is what I would support.

 

[psyfly]

AKMtRunner:

Let's see: Last Texas legislative session, our elected representatives really took the moniker "lawmaker" seriously. They proposed something like 4500+ bills to be considered and actually passed 1700+ into brand-new Texas law (okay, some were "resolutions" and relatively harmless, I admit).

I've heard estimates that there are something like 21000 laws regarding guns alone.

We've got to Stop the Madness!

Gun regulation: look to the 2nd amendment.

IMO, of course.

W

 

[HankR]

Skribs for president

I could back Skribs' compromise.

I would like to also address a ban on the (pretend) gun free zones.

 

[AKMtnRunner]

Poll posted now.

 

[krupparms]

I say no deals! Good proposals have been made & rejected already! Nothing will satisfiey these people except total gun bans! I have seen it happen before! No crimes were stopped because of the last AWB! And a new one will not sunset aging! Will be stuck with it! And the next killings will just make them call for more stuff being banned! And then we will be like England and Australia! No Guns! As for waiting to be told what go do, I believe we should tell them NO NEW GUN LAWS! WORK ON THE STUFF AREADY PROPOSED! ARM TEACHERS,& VOLUNTEERS, FIX THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM! ALLOW OPEN CARRY &DO AWAY WITH GUN FREE ZONES! JMO.

 

[LNK]

Now that discussions are going several times around, time to take a poll.

Sorry, I have lost all patients with you. I wish there was a way to block your posts. Officially calling troll. No offense!

LNK

 

[rdefabri]

All - I'm relatively new here, but have been an active member at another car related forum with a healthy group of gun owners. I also do statistical analysis as part of my career, so the facts are clear. Without re-hashing some of the great posts at the other forum, what I can tell you is this - gun control reducing crime is a fallacy. A myth. Just based on facts - not emotion.

Right off the bat, less than 1% of all deaths in the USA are attributed to homicide. Of all homicides, ~58% are committed with a gun.

Of those, 85% are committed with an illegally acquired (purchased or stolen), the remaining 15% with a legally acquired gun. In 2009, the number of homicides attributed to legal guns was ~1,725. The remainder (e.g., the homicides attributed to illegal guns) was ~9,750. So we're talking a very small number, especially in light of the fact that 90 out of 100 hundred people in the US own guns (or ~310M guns in the US) - more on this later.

Now, the prominent demographic impacted by the illegal gun-related homicides are MALES from 18-34. I highlight this because any actions should be focused on this group...and I don't mean new gun laws. So we know women and anyone younger than 18, older than 35 is not likely to steal or procure a gun illegally. It's consolidated to this group. The total number of homicides in this category amounts to ~8,069.

So why are we focusing on new gun laws? I agree that ~9,000 deaths is 9,000 too many, but really?? When suicide (36,897), traffic accidents (35,909), poisonings (31,752), falls (24,789), and "other injuries" (22,221) ALL rank higher and are more than DOUBLE to TRIPLE the gun-related homicides??

This is clearly pushing an agenda...and we should all be a little more concerned about that. Our 2nd amendment rights are not in place so we can hunt and plink at a range. They are there to protect us from tyrants that can't handle the power freedom and liberty bring. I won't go off on a rant about that, but you can certainly read the writings of Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry on the subject.

I have a great study from Harvard that underlines this point. Gun control does not yield a corresponding drop in gun related crime. The study is a little older, so I did one of my own...the main highlight here is a comparison of Brazil to the US. Brazil, as you may know, is the 5th largest country in the world, and the 6th largest economy - so it's a first tier nation. It also has some pretty strict gun laws. Let's compare:

Brazil has 8 guns per every 100 citizens
The USA has 90 guns per every 100 citizens

Brazil has 18.10 gun-related homicides per 100,000 citizens
The USA has 2.97 gun-related homicides per 100,000 citizens

Do we really need new gun laws or are our leaders slowly taking away our individual rights and freedoms? Something we are willingly giving up...for what?

Far more people are killed by drunk drivers...and the penalties are far less severe...think about it.

 

[Skribs]

Rdefabie, 310M guns in the US doesn't mean 310M gun owners. Some people have hundreds of guns. I have 6. That means that for your statistic, I count as 6 gun owners.

But, I do like your stat that 85% of the guns that are used in crime are illegal already. It means that not only are politicians trying to stop 1% of the deaths, they're trying to stop the 0.15% that are done with lawfully-obtained weapons. Then factor in how many people who would not be prohibited persons commit their first violent act with a gun, and that number will probably stay the same even with gun bans. At the very best, the number killed with legally obtained guns will drop, and the number killed with illegal guns and/or other weapons will rise, so the number of homicides remains the same.

For the most part, if someone wants to kill, they will kill.

 

[stonecutter2]

I voted for new regulation without bans or restrictions.

Require every firearm transfer occurs through an FFL01 or FFL03 (if eligible). Far less chance of someone ineligible for buying to work the system to their advantage.

Require every firearm owner to pass a psychological examination regularly. No crazies should own firearms.

Require all household members of firearm owners to pass psychological examinations. Anyone failing disqualifies the household. No access for crazies to guns in their own household.

The law abiding/responsible owners are not of my concern. It's quite obviously the people that are "not quite right" that are the problem, and a solution needs to devised.

It will certainly be inconvenient. But that is hardly my concern.

 

[P5 Guy]

Affordable Mental Health Care Act, ObamaMentalCare.

 

[xXxplosive]

Why penalize all legit gun owners because of one derranged individual....they're agenda is showing....and the 2A is bigger than all of this, therefor.......I Vote NONE.

 

[mljdeckard]

Acceptable is the wrong term. There are rat feces in peanut butter. We live with them. That doesn't mean it's ACCEPTABLE.

None. There is no good reason to take any.

Having said that, I have heard a couple of suggestions in the last couple of days that make me think hard. If we HAVE to concede something, (And I am FAR from thinkig we are in that position yet,) if we accepted having to run every transfer through an FFL, with the existing protections already in place, it would be BAD, but it would take a long time before it was used against us.

If we banned non-dealer transactions at gun shows, it wouldn't change much, we would just make connections and conduct the transfers at another location.

Like I say, none of these make sense or make us safer, but there are ways to minimize damage.

 

[Skribs]

Require every firearm transfer occurs through an FFL01 or FFL03 (if eligible). Far less chance of someone ineligible for buying to work the system to their advantage.

And enforce it how? In another thread, someone mentioned that 85% of unjustified homicides with firearms are commited by illegally obtained firearm purchases. Which means new laws would only cover the other 15%, and if they legally obtain them before, they'd still legally obtain them with this restriction.

Require every firearm owner to pass a psychological examination regularly. No crazies should own firearms.

Wanting to own a firearm = violent tendancies = you're crazy. We coined hoplophobia, what's to keep them from coining hoplomania and determining that we're nuts? Psychology is a very left-leaning field, it wouldn't be hard to get a psychologist to try and get that into the DSM.

Require all household members of firearm owners to pass psychological examinations. Anyone failing disqualifies the household. No access for crazies to guns in their own household.

Oh, so because little Jimmy is depressed his family has to kick him out or get rid of all their guns? That's hardly fair. If you have uncompetent or unreliable individuals in your house, it is your responsibility to keep the guns safe from THEM, but not to choose between them and your guns. The problem with democracy is that it relies on the citizens being responsible. Tyranny relies on subjects being controlled.

The law abiding/responsible owners are not of my concern. It's quite obviously the people that are "not quite right" that are the problem, and a solution needs to devised.

If someone is "not quite right" enough that you want to keep them away from guns, you need to keep them away from people. If they have access to bludgeoning or stabbing objects, they are still a danger.

Like I said earlier, we're not going to fix the problem with gun regulation, but with people regulation. There is no way to ban violence, but we can deter/prevent a lot of it with a better legal and social system.

 

[TarDevil]

Require every firearm owner to pass a psychological examination regularly. No crazies should own firearms.

Who sets the standards, and how often should an owner jump through these hoops?

Require all household members of firearm owners to pass psychological examinations. Anyone failing disqualifies the household. No access for crazies to guns in their own household.

If the gun owner passes, he/she takes care of the rest. Totally unreasonable to subject an entire family to this.

Edited to add: Skribs beat me to it.

 

[rdefabri]

Skribs,

Yes, I know - I'm just stating the numbers "flat". Let's make it an even 300M guns in the US.

Point is, the overwhelming majority of those guns are LEGAL. And when you break it down to ~1,725 deaths occurred with a legal gun, then the percentage is 0.0006%....virtually a non-issue.

~10,000 deaths - all by ILLEGAL guns - still represents 0.0033%...again, virtually a non-issue. You could also factor in that most of these crimes had alcohol, drugs, or mental illness related to them (although I don't have the break down).

Point is - don't accept rhetoric to equal facts. This act was heinous, but does not represent the American culture or who we are.

 

[M-Cameron]

I voted for new regulation without bans or restrictions.

Require every firearm transfer occurs through an FFL01 or FFL03 (if eligible). Far less chance of someone ineligible for buying to work the system to their advantage.

Require every firearm owner to pass a psychological examination regularly. No crazies should own firearms.

Require all household members of firearm owners to pass psychological examinations. Anyone failing disqualifies the household. No access for crazies to guns in their own household.

The law abiding/responsible owners are not of my concern. It's quite obviously the people that are "not quite right" that are the problem, and a solution needs to devised.

It will certainly be inconvenient. But that is hardly my concern.

where to begin......

1)people who buy their guns illegally.....buy their guns illegally, what makes you think they are all of a sudden going to find an FFL to do a transfer.

2) who determines who is "crazy" enough to not own a firearm......... psychology is not an exact science, you can go to 10 doctors and get 10 different diagnoses.......as it stands now, you are already barred from buying a gun if you have been legally mandated to a mental facility.

3) so even if my family member is a "crazy", i am somehow barred from ownership.......even if i keep my guns under lock and key and the "crazy" has no access, i am still banned.

i think you have a terrible misunderstanding of people with mental illness, the fact that you refer to them as "crazies" is more than enough to prove that.......the vast majority of people with mental illness are non-violent individuals. they pose a greater threat to themselves than they do other people. you are talking about restricting the rights of millions of people because of a statistically insignificant percent of the population.

 

[smalls]

It will certainly be inconvenient. But that is hardly my concern.

That's the Illinois spirit!

 

[zxcvbob]

Repeal the 1968 GCA. All of it. Divert the money saved to mental health.

We can work on reopening the machine gun registry and removing silencers from the NFA later, cuz those don't really affect the current crisis one way or the other.

 

[Cosmoline]

I'm for something carefully-crafted that gives talking points without actually infringing rights in any meaningful way. Like a "gun show loophole" closure that only applies to the four corners of a gun show. These things are dinosaurs anyway, and they've degenerated into glorified flea markets. It would be a mercy killing. And the point is not to actually compromise, but provide *SOMETHING* for our people in Congress and the Senate to cite when the other dude waves dead kids around. I suspect this is what the NRA has been working up. Just saying "no" won't cut it, however rational that response maybe. And of course it's critical to offer something that expands the ban on the violent mentally ill.

Require every firearm owner to pass a psychological examination regularly. No crazies should own firearms.

Now that's crazy. It's actually far more intrusive than most anti-gun nations.

If you want something radical, one proposal I've tossed around with the antis was to abolish the ATF, repeal all federal gun control laws through the NFA of 34 and replace the entire system with a new agency operated and funded by gun owners. Sort of a CMP on steroids. So we have the reins of power. The mandate will be to encourage safe shooting and gun ownership. Full autos would be surplussed out based on new licenses on a shall-issue basis akin to CCW's. So everyone could get an M16, M14 or whatever they wanted. Restrictions would be enforced for mandatory training and everyone would need to go through gun safety school. All anti-gun local laws would be overriden, and I could walk right up to the Mayor of NYC with my AR over my shoulder. NYPD could bite my broad backside. We'd also have power to open new rifle ranges, create new training facilities and so on.

The down side is we would have to be responsible for policing our own ranks. But we'd be doing it and controlling that process, not the BATF. And frankly we ALREADY police our own ranks informally. We do it by deciding who gets to join gun clubs, by deciding who we'll sell to and by generally keeping an eye out for the nogoodnicks. And I'll wager we can spot them better than any federal agent. I realize the most recent madman had some training, but it was apparently informal by his mom. I can think of almost no serious criminals who went through something like a Thunder Ranch training program. The self-selection and oversight provided by the process is itself an excellent way of weeding out the dangerous nuts.

And in the end, though there would be doubtless controversies, we'd be better armed, better trained and better citizens. All under our own oversight, with a board chosen and paid by the people who use the system not by the President.

 

[Skribs]

Rdefabri, I wasn't disagreeing with your overall analysis, but you should say that there are 90 guns per 100 people, not that 90% of the people own guns. Because I guarantee you the number of gun owners is nowhere near 90%. Removing that error from your argument gives it more credibility, because I agree with the rest of your post.

M-Cameron, on point #3, "crazies" are more likely to be victims of a violent crime than perpetrators. After all, what jury is going to believe that homeless 15-year-old schizophrenic when she says Santa Clause attacked her in an alley and keeps calling the judge a ferret and the prosecutor a bullfrog?

 

[SSN Vet]

I personally would probably support any measures, even involving a curtailment of my liberties and constitutional rights, if it had any real and reasonable possibility of making a difference and preventing a slaughter like Sandy Hook from happening again.

HOWEVER, all the BS bans and limits that have been conjured up till this time have been pretty much completely discredited for having any real positive effect. Rather, IMHO, all they have done, is made law abiding citizens unwittingly turned into "criminals" by an overly complex and ambiguously defined set of laws, that are administered by an arrogant and hostile agency that is itself not accountable, and holds citizens guilty until proven innocent.

What your seeing right now is an all out assault by liberal politicos, with their media minions, against the NRA and gun owners (who are typically conservative). Their frothing at the smell of easy blood and shamelessly exploiting the Sandy Hook survivors, and week minded blind followers of pop culture.

 

[Skribs]

Well said SSN vet.

Although there is something to say about the liberty vs. safety debate, I can at least understand your POV. You are right, though. It's all a bandaid that won't fix anything.

 

[rdefabri]

Rdefabri, I wasn't disagreeing with your overall analysis, but you should say that there are 90 guns per 100 people, not that 90% of the people own guns. Because I guarantee you the number of gun owners is nowhere near 90%. Removing that error from your argument gives it more credibility, because I agree with the rest of your post.

Yes, you are correct...good point.

 

[481]

What your seeing right now is an all out assault by liberal politicos, with their media minions, against the NRA and gun owners (who are typically conservative). Their frothing at the smell of easy blood and shamelessly exploiting the Sandy Hook survivors, and week minded blind followers of pop culture.

SSN Vet,

You have defined perfectly our opposition (the Left/Liberals) who would exploit the deaths of children merely to satisfy their eagerness infringe upon the rights of law-abiding Americans.

How utterly sickening they are.