Allserene - firearms ownership.

[lykoris]

While this is off-topic from ‘gun shops in Europe'
http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=474260

I find it extremely important to address what you say and as such have opened a new thread so the other doesn’t get locked down by admin.

Allserene,

I believe you have completely missed my point.

By ‘attitude’ I mean your perception on how things should be done (i.e. steel cabinet & 1 hour of basic firearms safety – these are UK requirements). You believe these are a necessary good and will prevent misfortunes/accidents with firearms…essentially you want to bring across the water what happens to be a legal requirement in the UK at present. I firmly disagree and let me explain why.

I grew up in the Republic of Ireland and my 1st experience with a firearm was my grandfather taking down his .22lr rifle from over the stove in the kitchen…and unlocking the ammunition from a drawer in the kitchen along with finding the bolt. Time passes and more and more regulations come into effect in the ROI until it is similar to the UK system now. I eventually move to Luxembourg and here I can buy whatever I want, any handgun regardless of size or caliber and the same for a rifle, a barrett in semi-auto in .50 is possible here if you have the funds and a silencer to put on it if I wanted. I can even buy a fully functional MG42 on a collectors’ license. Then imagine my surprise (“shock” more than anything) in being told by the police I didn’t need a gun cabinet to store any firearms and there was no safety course involved in owning firearms. I thought this country is absolutely CRAZY.

I thought like this because I had become so used to the Irish system/(same as UK) and how punitive/restrictive it had become. It trains your mind to think in a certain manner i.e. you own guns you NEED a firearms cabinet period. You own guns you NEED safety training.

But you know what, people with children here don’t need to be told (or made to by government) to buy a gun cabinet….they buy it of their own accord. People with lots of guns buy cabinets to safeguard their investment. People here don’t require 1 hour of basic safety training and to date I have yet to hear of an accident at a gun club….why? Because others take the time to explain to new members the rules of firearms safety (as any gun club does) and will politely inform other shooters if anything they do is breaking the rules. We politely govern ourselves without government. There is no need for 1 hour of safety training.

Actually I would like other shooters to have had at least basic training if they are going to stand 6 feet away from me with an AK47 - an hour's training is plenty.

I still find this ironic given you did the same thing with an AR-15(especially with 14 years as an officer in a club in the UK)…

You should have taken the responsibility of knowing how the firearm functions before trying to shoot it…not the government, YOU. You scared yourself and as such want to have this 1 hour of training to prevent others doing what you did. I’m in my early 30s and I find it so hard to believe this ‘cotton wool’ approach of protecting the public from themselves and the public willingly abdicating their own personal responsibility to the higher authority that is government. It just defies common sense. The generations before us never had it nor needed it and they were men who directly assumed personal responsibility without the coddling that is so rampant in the society of today. This is ironic, you are in retirement and I’m in my 30s…it should be the other way around.

Even Cheney shot his buddy by accident.

One point, you cannot legislate against stupidity. Again, you “cannot legislate against stupidity”.

A look at some of the stuff on youtube where they give a 7 year old a fully automatic large bore weapon and it spins him round in circles and everyone ducks

1. youtube certainly isn’t representative of firearms owners and again and more importantly

2. you “cannot legislate against stupidity” – even with a 1 hour course, they would have done the same thing with their 7 year old because they are jackasses. The same guys give a .50 deagle to their skinny wife to shoot – they’re the extreme minority. Again, they will behave like this regardless of the 1 hour of training they received so many moons ago when they first bought a firearm. You cannot legislate against stupidity.

You want to give & take/compromise on certain issues; it’s repeatedly stated by you in your posts.

1. I think many gun owners would agree to 'give and take' as long as the government had lots of 'give' and not much 'take'
2. I reckon American gun owners would benefit from coming off the defensive and asking for 'liberalisation' of gun ownership across the States in exchange for some small responsible concessions (which would benefit gun owners actually), and keep the non owners on side at the same time.
3. really makes me twitchy about safety so I would let the politicians make rules for that in exchange for.....
4. making a big deal about some pretty easy concessions on our side would reduce the opposition and enhance our chances of holding the line on the big stuff

You fail to understand that in trying to negotiate one thing for another is a losing battle because the anti side will repeatedly come back to the table until the only thing left to give up is the BIG issues. The agenda of the antis is no firearms – that is the end game. Take a read of www.iansa.org and their objectives.

The point is, and it is blatantly evident time and time again in Europe that once you negotiate for rights and give up others in return you are losing this continuous battle for the right of firearm ownership. MJDECKARD has made this point perfectly.

The only way to fight for rights is to turn non-shooters into shooters.

Of course it would be nice to just dig in and say 'from my cold fingers ' etc, but if we have no trench and no weapons, it's a losing strategy in the long run and we need smarter strategies to achieve our purpose.

No it isn’t a losing strategy – the Washington ban was overturned like this – the NRA didn’t compromise on aspects of rifle ownership for others to obtain handguns.

But we agree with driver tests before they get a license, and exams for doctors, and so as long as we have eternal vigilance on basic safety training ( 1 hour or so), not being used as a 'discouragement' tool, then I think that would benefit all shooters who have to stand next to new shooters, and the new shooters themselves - and we could 'swap' it for a concession on some law we don't like.

I have a really hard time finding the logic in the comparison above.

A car needs a license to drive, a doctor needs a medical certificate to practice….and as such a gun owner needs a 'safety license' to use a firearm….I completely disagree.

you are still thinking like an Englishman living under the UK system - embrace the freedom of choice that the U.S. offers and remove the conditioning that the UK system has imprinted in your mind.

I had to do the same thing. I lived under a liberal system with my grandfather until it became a draconian system akin to that of the UK....to complete freedom again with firearms laws here in Luxembourg.

 

[Shung]

seen in Switzerland..

If you compromise and accept "common sense" regulations, you are always loosing.. why ? because compromises are only ONE way in the eyes of anti-guns crowds, whatever statistics and numbers say about guns and gun laws..

 

[hso]

This has been referred to as the "ratchet" effect. Once a concession has been made to a bureaucracy the next push for another concession from the citizen is inevitable, but any restoration of what was sacrificed is not. This continues until a particular level of discomfort is experienced by the affected citizenry, but with many laws over a period of years you find a number of appeasers who will sacrifice even more to keep what they have.

The problem with such thinking is two fold. A bureaucracy becomes like a living thing and strives to increase its strength by expanding its influence and control. It spawns new regulations to grow. When a bureaucracy has influence over your right to own firearms the only thing it can do is reduce your freedom. Increasing your freedom reduces its influence and therefore reduces its strength. The other force working against your freedom to own firearms comes from the conscious effort on the part of those who are our philosophical opposites. They actively believe that firearms ownership is bad, unethical, deviant, immoral. These antis continuously work to remove firearms from the public realm and work to make firearms ownership socially unacceptable. They won't change their thinking on this. They will work doggedly to use the natural tendency of bureaucracies to restrict the right of an individual as a means of growth, along with a social agenda to make individual ownership of firearms a form of deviancy, they will use every "small" concession to turn the crank another increment. As they ratchet the restrictions up another notch the voices of the few gun owners left are so small that no one hears the lid cranked shut on your ability to own any firearm.

 

[lykoris]

Thank you hso for stating so concisely and eloquently what I wanted to say from the start.

What you have outlined (the Ratchet effect) is exactly what has happened throughout Europe these last decades and continues to this day. A constant force driven to demonize firearms within society and eventually remove them altogether .

The last AGM of Protell(Swiss equivalent of the NRA) had their president state that the EU laws that came into effect in Switzerland on Dec 12th 2008 has meant that the Swiss have lost all secular sovereignty on firearms legislation to the benefit of the E.U.

"La vaste information sur les modifications de la loi suisse sur les armes et de
l’ordonnance correspondante, entrées en vigueur le 12.12.08. Les modifications les plus graves et les plus nombreuses ont été provoquées par l’adaptation de notre législation sur les armes à la directive sur les armes de l’UE. Avec l’adaptation à la législation sur les armes de l’UE, nous avons perdu notre souveraineté séculaire sur la législation sur les armes au profit de l’UE. Celui qui prétend autre chose est un illusionniste, un opportuniste ou il regarde ailleurs."

Ireland(ROI) also banned handguns this year except for Olympic air/.22lr pistols. Civilians had overturned a 30 year handgun ban the government imposed during the troubles with Northern Ireland. This ban elapsed and a civilian brought a case to the high court in 2004 I believe that he was legally entitled to possess a handgun and he won. The Minister of Justice had done everything in his power and succeeded this year in making them illegal indefinitely a mere 5 years later....for the safety of the public 'glock baby killers' needed to be banned. IPSC was portrayed as a 'means of teaching people how to kill' despite a letter from the president of the IPSC to the contrary.

But hell, this is Europe, if you own a firearm you are by default a minion of the devil

it's simple

demonize
divide public opinion
conquor

and all the while make it more and more expensive to be a shooter with increased regulation/restrictions that effectively stiffle interest. I personally know 4 people in France who gave up shooting because it was too much trouble.

I ramble a lot but if anything I would say don't let it happen in the U.S.

Learn from what is going on here.

 

[allserene]

We seem to be disagreeing on the method of keeping gun ownership safe from restrictive legislation - which is what we all want

We all live in democracies where the majority get their way. The majority will always be non gun owners. In order to stop the majority moving against us, it's necessary for us to look safe and responsible and not a threat to society. People who's hobbies are not a cause for concern. If anyone is not with me up to this point, then they wont be with me for the rest of this post

Actually I was called 'too English' or something similar a few months ago by a poster who said that guns are not a 'hobby' - they are to use against people who would insult us or attack us or invade us. I think a lot of shooters get pleasure from target shooting and hunting and trap shooting and killing people isn't the main driver behind gun ownership. I would like to think that my views are not English or conditioned by England, but rather my own conclusions and observations after careful thought and talking a lot to real American shooters.

There are 36,000 gun deaths per annum in the USA. That is not sustainable for a society and unless shooters start thinking deeper about how they can distance themselves from all that and help to reduce it, then they WILL be affected by legislation eventually

My ideas are to promote things which will make the public and the politicians look on us, the legal responsible shooters, as not being a part of the problem at all and therefore not a target for legislation. Leave us out of any legislative moves



Now we have agreed that the people we see on UTUBE giving automatic weapons to small children are morons/idiots etc. Those people damage our interests. Anything we can do to bring down regulation on them, aids our cause and promotes the public's image of us.

My ideas are to let the legislators legislate, but make sure it is aimed at the right parties.
It wont stop them any more than the law against burglary stops burglars, but it will reduce it

I understand the ratchet effect, I understand underhand legislation extending far more than than people suspected on the surface. My idea would be too use the power of that
to the benefit of shooters by directing it way from us and by helping to shape the moves rather than just being surly about it.

Of course we could just continue to be bellicose and aggressive in the protection of our rights - we have tried that and look where the tide is flowing....

The alternative is to be cleverer about it, enhance the reputation of responsible shooter at the expense of the other lot. Help reduce the 36,000 gun deaths by our suggestions. Help reduce the suicides and accidents - as long as the moves were crafted with care, it wouldn't affect us at all, except in a positive way. Divert their fire on to the people we don't want to be associated with - the gangs and idiots - because if we are part of that legislation, we can make sure we are not part of the collateral damage

 

[mustang_steve]

allserene,

You're talking about regulating human nature.

Since the dawn of time, some humans have been killing themselves. It's tragic, but it's part of the nature of people....when they feel they cannot climb up the ladder of life anymore, they take the most drastic and permanent out. That's what an overwhelming feeling of futility will do. Without guns in their hands, they'll use cooking knives, broken glass, pills, electricity, rope (twisted sheets can be used as rope as well as shoelaces), any source of large amounts of carbon monoxide....the list goes on and on. Bottom line, we cannot legislate suicide away, it's a societal issue and has to be solved by those around the person. Societal erosion isn't a topic for here.

Accidents are solved by responsible handling practices being hammered into the heads of those that will use it. Also making sure kids cannot reach any firearms is a great start. This is just common sense and the average citizen here does it on their own accord anyways. When leaving the apartment, my HD pistol is unloaded, trigger locked, then the pistol, ammo and magazines are placed in a locked steel-lined drawer. I'm also teaching my roommate safe firearm practices.

The rest of the gun deaths can be summarized as either acts of violence or self defense. Self defense is justified, thus not an issue. The acts of violence is a case of criminals doing what they do best....and our own statistics have proven that barring them from legally owning guns does nothing....even areas that have a total ban on handguns will still have tremendous levels of murders with them, but now....where did they get them? See, now there's another catch. Criminals do what's profitable, and in a place where a certain desired item is requested regularly, smuggling them in can be quite profitable.....thus they will.

As for the Youtube toolboxes, let them be morons. Those that fail to associate the action with the person instead of the activity are the real problem. For some reason in this nation it's acceptable to blame anything but the person, which is the root of the main arguments of the anti-gun lobby here in the US of A. These Youtube fools are simply that, fools...and while I wish that crap was illegal, I already know how that downward spiral will go as well...basically giving the antis something to "expand" on.

 

[allserene]

The more I read these posts, the more I think we are all wanting exactly the same things as the result - but the two approaches are to leave the bad stuff to society or whatever and to say leave us out out of it and dont make any legislation which might affect us OR for us to get involved

My approach would be for us to say that all the bad gun stuff that happens is bound to affect us, and we should leave our comfort zone and to help to bear down on the accidents/suicides/crime etc by coming up with strategies - if we are the authors of those strategies , we can make sure any legislation doesnt affect us except in a positive way

I am probably in a minority of one in this - especially here in the real West, but I see restrictions on guns being a one way street in the future if we keep our present policy of digging in. I suppose the debate centers on -

A do we shooters have an interest in proposing wider actions regarding crime/suicide/accidents which might result in some legislation which we propose and which we therefore find quite acceptable, (say gun cabinets), and that will help take the heat off us and make us look responsible, OR

B do we just oppose any moves on the grounds that any moves are bound to end up in creeping legislation which will make guns illegal.


I am sure that 99% are going for B, but I fear it's not the 'taking the offensive' option, and it is the grumpy defensive option and we will lose more than we gain with that option. Time will tell.

 

[mustang_steve]

What I'm looking at is to criminalize actions, not the devices of the deed.

To criminalize the devices will also harm those that use such items in a constructive or positive manner.

To put it bluntly (kind of off-topic, but I'm going somewhere with this), I'm also not a fan of the concept of "illegal drugs", however I do hold the user responsible for any actions performed under the influence, as it's their responsibility to do so. If they get wasted and something sideways comes from it...they should get the book thrown at them.

Same with guns....let the people have guns, but if someone hurts/kills out of reckless or just outright bad practices with them, throw the freaking book at them. There's already laws in place to handle this part of it, thus no more are required. It's called the laws on murder/manslaughter/reckless endangerment/etc.

The idea of object specific acts annoys me, since these actions can be wrapped up into the generic terminology and handled more effectively. The law as it exists now is a labyrinthine monstrosity that is hard to navigate by even those who have dedicated their lives to it, and even within the part of this beast they claim knowledge to, can often drown in it. What does that say about the common man? Thus, the reasoning why I like laws on actions instead of objects....keeps the books cleaner, which means our odds of properly defending ourselves or properly prosecuting those who deserve it go up.

 

[nalioth]

What I'm looking at is to criminalize actions, not the devices of the deed.

Look at what you are writing.

When I last looked, "murder" and "robbery" have been crimes for thousands of years.

 

[mustang_steve]

Exactly. The actions have already been criminalized...that's what I was getting at. We are just adding more laws either for clarification, or just to make using specific items worse.

 

[hso]

There are 36,000 gun deaths per annum in the USA.That is not sustainable for a society

See, this is the sort of poor information that help propagate calls for banning firearms.

The number of homicides in 2006 (the most recent valid sample from the CDC) was 12,791 out of a population of 298,754,819. With a population the size of the US (many times the population of any EU country) gross numbers cause panic. The valid way to look at this is the rate of homicides or the rate of firearms deaths. The rate of firearms homicides for 2006 would be 12,791 out of 298,754,819 or 0.0000428 or 4.28 out of 100,000. For a mythical city of that size it means that there would be 4 homicides in a year. Considering this and that these numbers are below the occupational death rate for many industries there's not much to be concerned about. Rates, not gross numbers, are how injuries and deaths need to be compared.

What if we look at all the firearms deaths for the same year? Those totaled 30,896, not 36,000 (matter of fact the gross firearms deaths from 2000 to 2006 have been right around 30,000 not 36,000). That's a rate of 10.34 per 100,000. Think of that for a moment. In a city of 100,000 there would, on average, be a total of 10.34 firearms related deaths per year. That is all police shootings, suicides and homicides and the few accidental shootings.

Suicides make up half that total. In countries where firearms are not readily available the suicide rates are both higher and lower than the US. That means that the suicide component can reasonably be removed from the statistics since suicidal citizens will use any means in any country available to them to end their lives.

That reduces the rate to half, or around 5 per 100,000.

Again, gross numbers don't mean much in widely differing population sizes. The rate of firearms deaths are the only valid comparison.

 

[highorder]

But HSO, those are only "statistics."

Anti's are trying to save LIVES.


[/sarcasm]

 

[lykoris]

We seem to be disagreeing on the method of keeping gun ownership safe from restrictive legislation

yes, you wish to negotiate with the anti's and I am telling you they won't be happy until there are no more firearms. The theory of compromise with these people is a wonderful thing but in practise as is blatantly obvious from the history of Europe is that it doesn't work.

Europeans believe legislation can fix everything, if there is a problem allow the state to legislate with new laws to curtail what is unwanted whether it is anti-social behaviour or the length of a magazine you can put in your rifle

what is written below is taken from a UK paper with the the link that follows of the full story - the point this article makes is obvious within the context of this debate.

Ever tried selling a grey squirrel, impersonating a traffic warden, importing Polish potatoes or disturbing a pack of eggs without permission? If you do, you will be breaking the law.

These are among the 3,605 new criminal offences created by the Labour Government since it won power in 1997 - almost one for every day it has been in office.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has described the plethora of new laws as 'legislative diarrhoea'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...0-new-ways-making-criminal.html#ixzz0RCgHxKWC

I believe you have formed your opinion over many years and still bear the English

let's be reasonable
fair play
give and take in everything

mentality.

It's a losing game and the yanks have it right to give up nothing when it comes to firearms legislation.

+95% of firearms legislation is completely redundant, you believe there is merit in it.

I sincerely do not.

 

[lykoris]

Allserene,

I would also strongly encourage you to read this essay which details the history of how the UK went from zero firearms restrictions 100 years ago to regulations/restrictions that are draconian to say the least.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html

It is long but really worth it. Print it off if you don't want to read it all in one go.


and while their title may be an informal fallacy, it is very illustrative of the ratchet effect HSO mentioned above.

 

[allserene]

I believe you have formed your opinion over many years and still bear the English

let's be reasonable
fair play
give and take in everything

mentality.

Had worse said about me so I will accept that...

The Brits are apathetic and you can do anything to them, and only a tiny percentage owned guns - thats why it was so easy to steam roller them
No Member of parliament had any incentive to defend their position

The urbanization and the change in demography in the USA will gently slide the US that way over the years. Where I live in the desert we all have guns, but Seattle is where the votes are and the people I see there sure don't look like shooters

You can see the effect in the last Presidential election and that's democracy for you.

Once gun owners don't have the democratic (votes) clout, they will go the same way as all other vote-powerless groups..

If that is the way of it, then simply relying on NRA power at the ballot box (which worked before) is not going to do it and we will have to come up with a different way of keeping shooting liberalized

ok so it won't be my way, but a way which is different to the present way will be needed.

Taking guns to Town Hall meetings just ain't clever and makes it worse and riles public opinion, so we have to be more politically effective and get the voters on our side - my way or your way or somebody's way - but that is the only way . The Politicians in the US are followers of public opinion and are not leaders in the way that UK leaders are able to herd their sheep. Public Opinion is what is needed so whatever is done needs to be aimed at that and much of that public opinion will be city based and ethnic based and needs to be addressed with a different approach - dare I say 'reasonable' approach.

 

[General Geoff]

You can see the effect in the last Presidential election and that's democracy for you.

The United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

The Politicians in the US are followers of public opinion

Public opinion does not trump the Constitution, unless and until the Constitution is legally amended via representatives. Again, this country is NOT a democracy.

Taking guns to Town Hall meetings just ain't clever and makes it worse and riles public opinion,

Perhaps the public opinion NEEDS to be riled. In this age of information, it is a rare occurrence indeed when a pro-gun person becomes anti. It is relatively common, however, for an anti to become pro-gun, with sufficient knowledge and reasoning.

 

[Cosmoline]

My ideas are to promote things which will make the public and the politicians look on us, the legal responsible shooters, as not being a part of the problem at all and therefore not a target for legislation. Leave us out of any legislative moves

We *ARE* the public. That's the difference between the US and the UK. In the UK gun owners are a besieged minority, as you well know. Here there are countless millions of us. Not an outright majority overall, but a very significant percentage of the population. The antis have long sought to drive wedges between "extreme" gun owners and "Joe the hunter," but they have in large part failed. Any effort to legislate "common sense" gun control is designed to drive this wedge home, and must be resisted. It's not a question of making gun owners look more favorable to the majority--it's a question of refusing to yield to a divisive tactic.

Of course we could just continue to be bellicose and aggressive in the protection of our rights - we have tried that and look where the tide is flowing....

You mean the tide that has totally reversed a century and a half of anti-CCW laws? The tide that has finally brought recognition of the Second at the highest levels? The tide that has turned the antis from a moving force in the Democratic party to a gagged and forgotten interest group? The Dems have total control in DC, but there is no new gun law coming down. There won't be. They remember the spanking they got before when they did that sort of thing. I see little need to offer concessions, though I do get tired of the "Obama is taking our guns!" fear mongering.

If that is the way of it, then simply relying on NRA power at the ballot box (which worked before) is not going to do it and we will have to come up with a different way of keeping shooting liberalized

It's not the NRA power, it's OUR power. That's another classic misunderstanding. The NRA itself isn't particularly wealthy, and the gun industry employs a tiny number of people. The power comes from *US* and our votes. If the US were a Parliamentary system with a NATIONAL government we might well be in trouble. But it isn't. We have no national government. We have fifty sovereign states and a FEDERAL government, which is not the same thing. Power is divided and balanced to keep NY and LA from controlling the country. Even the rural states have two Senators, a system specifically designed from keeping the urbanized states from dominating the rural ones.

There are 36,000 gun deaths per annum in the USA. That is not sustainable for a society and unless shooters start thinking deeper about how they can distance themselves from all that and help to reduce it, then they WILL be affected by legislation eventually

I'm not sure what you mean by "gun deaths." The term itself is loaded, though I do run into it in UK papers all the time. We already have laws against murder and we do what we can to stop suicides. Are you assuming there are 36,000 accidental shootings per year in the US? Because that's a lot of nonsense.

Public Opinion is what is needed so whatever is done needs to be aimed at that and much of that public opinion will be city based and ethnic based and needs to be addressed with a different approach - dare I say 'reasonable' approach

"Reasonable" is the rhetoric of failure in the US. It's very different in the UK, where people want to be part of the flock. Here, victory comes only from the attack. That means everything from refusing to bend on so-called "common sense" or "reasonable" gun controls to walking around with a rifle on your back. It means redefining society and rewriting laws to accept civilian ownership of firearms.

You can see examples in many other political movements from civil rights to the resurgence of the religious right. Whether you're talking about being openly gay, black and proud, or proud of your old fashioned religious beliefs, it pays to be boisterous in the US. It never pays to start out looking for some "reasonable" position.

 

[allserene]

If the country is not a democracy, and public opinion doesn't matter, and the 2nd stands INVINCIBLE, then why are all the shooters getting so het up ?

Why are we wasting time defending the impregnable (The 2nd, not Sarah's daughter)

 

[General Geoff]

Why are we wasting time defending the impregnable (The 2nd, not Sarah's daughter)

The 2nd amendment, now that it has been affirmed as an individual right, IS impregnable. The only thing left is nailing down the legal definition of "bear," "arms," and "infringed."

After that, it's just a matter of time, lawsuits, and happy faces.

 

[allserene]

I reckon it's the States who will take away rights. Washington State has made it illegal to open carry where someone can be alarmed. The days of AK47 open carry in downtown San Francisco have gone forever.
The UK Citizen still has the right to own and bear arms but it's as good as useless because of admin.
When firearms control is extended to UK proportions in the US, the 2nd will still be in force

Nobody can rely on the 2nd. Nobody can rely on the constitution. Nobody can rely on Politicians

Only overwhelming public opinion can stop the States in their restrictions or protect the 2nd from being changed

That opinion will not look that of an Idaho buffalo farmer - it will look like a 23 year old Japanese immigrant who works at Micrososoft in Washington or a Mexican lady bank clerk in Sacramento. If we don't hold those people then we lose

 

[lykoris]

and yet that vote came in at 5-4

 

[Cosmoline]

t will look like a 23 year old Japanese immigrant

It's a good point, and we do need to be sure to be inclusive. But it was in point of fact a Japanese-American man who's patient arguments turned me from an ardent anti to the Cosmoline-soaked nutter I am today. And I dare say my own Swedish and German ancestors would never have thought owning a firearm was appropriate for a mere civilian.

 

[General Geoff]

That opinion will not look that of an Idaho buffalo farmer - it will look like a 23 year old Japanese immigrant who works at Micrososoft in Washington or a Mexican lady bank clerk in Sacramento. If we don't hold those people then we lose

I don't really understand what you're arguing, since more gun control does literally nothing to persuade antis to the side of pro gun ownership. Only education and range trips can do that.


And for what it's worth, I've never hunted in my life. My parents never owned firearms. I became the first gun owner in the family at age 19 (I'm 24 now). I live in a city with a population of over 100,000. And I open carry almost every day. I do my part to educate and enlighten those who are blind, and trust me, it's not by advocating for "compromise" or "common sense" gun control.

 

[allserene]

I don't really understand what you're arguing, since more gun control does literally nothing to persuade antis to the side of pro gun ownership. Only education and range trips can do that.

Well I am loving the freedom to own the guns I have, and that I couldnt have had in the UK

I am now trying to figure how to hang on to them in the future

I can see that the stats of gun problems in the US are something that the Politicians will be forced to address. I am arguing for the gun lobby to be seen as the good guys who are working against the people who cause problems rather than saying it's nothing to do with us and we have our rights so leave us alone

For instance, registering the serial number of my gun so it could be traced back, is not something I see as eroding my rights - I think it's a slap against gun thieves and criminals
and helps to get em jailed. For me to say I wont help the Police with stuff like that is antisocial against my community

Plenty of people aren't bothered about crime or helping the Police etc etc and just want their gun that nobody knows about

I guess my approach is a minority one in shooting circles, but not in the population at large, and thats why I want the shooting community to sound more like the community at large

 

[lykoris]

I'm severely disappointed you didn't read the article I posted as it would enlighten you and perhaps change your point of view.

I love airguns, I have the best precharged pneumatic rifles money can buy, the English are renowned for making the best (side effect of strict firearms legislation).

I live in Luxembourg....as you will know a tiny country between France/Germany/Belgium.

I have a nice collection of airguns and BY LAW HERE, all my airguns need to put on my firearms license to record their serial number...even bb guns with a 1 ft-lbf muzzle velocity. Everything must go on my license.

I'm a law abiding citizen and everything I own is on my license.

I think that legal requirement is BS but that's the law.

there are 101 other reasons I don't favour registration and the argument you put forward is incorrect in many ways.

Let me ask you two questions strictly relating to centerfire firearms

How many crimes do you think will be solved with this registration database of serial numbers?
Do you have any idea of the costs involved in maintaining such a database?