Washington Post: Obama’s Gun Controls Not Enough, Confiscation Needed

[Midwest]

Washington Post: Obama’s Gun Controls Not Enough, Confiscation Needed

The Washington Post (according to Breitbart) is saying that gun control is not enough and confiscation is needed. So not only is Hillary and others are talking about. But apparently now is the Washington Post.



http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...icy-that-will-reduce-gun-violence-in-america/


"On January 13 The Washington Post observed that President Obama’s executive gun controls do not portend a substantial reduction in gun crime because they lack the one key element–gun confiscation. According to WAPO, confiscation “is likely the only policy that would dramatically reduce gun violence in the United States.”
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[Sam1911]

Well good. Glad even the antis are admitting that nothing they'll ever be able to accomplish will actually do anything to reduce "gun violence."

Seeing as it's been on the decline for decades, along with all violent crime, I guess it's the things WE (not they) are doing that must be reducing violence. Things like buying more guns? Training more and shooting more? Getting millions of new folks into shooting? Getting carry permits by the wagon load? Passing less and less restrictive gun laws.

Must be working!

 

[johnandersonoutdoors]

Maybe I am wrong, bit I fear one of their next steps will be to try to move towards even less jail time for violent offenders, as if jail terms aren't already ridiculously short.

They need to create a crisis to justify their goals and we will all suffer for it.

 

[Sam1911]

Ok. We can "fear" that he might do anything at all to try to hurt us. Do we have any evidence to back up that fear? Any indication that he's actually proposing such a thing, has the authority to make that happen, or that his reason for doing so has anything at all to do with gun control?



It is very easy to be afraid and very easy to come up with narratives (plausible, possible, or not) by which he (or "they") may try to hurt us. It is of far greater value if those are in some way connected with the real world.

 

[Jackal]

Maybe I am wrong, bit I fear one of their next steps will be to try to move towards even less jail time for violent offenders, as if jail terms aren't already ridiculously short.

In my opinion, our violent crime laws are under enforced and our victimless crime laws are over enforced. In 1980, a man here in WA brutally tortured/raped/killed 3 people in a bar, received 3 life terms in prison. They are ACTUALLY considering his early release in 2018. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...rderer-angers-reichert-prosecutor-satterberg/

Now, get caught with a rifle barrel 1 inch too short and your going away for 10 years...
Get caught for tax evasion and they will lock you up forever.

We have some serious issues with our law enforcement system when violent criminals and murderers can serve less time than non violent offenders.

 

[Sam1911]

Ok, but that has nothing to do with the point of this thread, nor are criminal sentencing guidelines a topic for discussion here at THR.

 

[anothernewb]

It's the washedup post. they're kinda crazy over there. I take most of what's reported there with a whole jar of salt.

 

[DeepSouth]

You guys should read the article

A link to the original article, so you can read it without the false implications.

What they said, among much else is "An interesting fact about his proposals is he has admitted they might have only a modest impact -- raising the question, for proponents of gun control, of whether these policies would be enough. Obama has rejected the idea of confiscating Americans’ guns, but the evidence suggests that it is likely the only policy that would dramatically reduce gun violence in the United States."

"One policy that proved remarkably effective in preventing suicides was Australia’s mandatory buy-back scheme. The country required owners of certain weapons to forfeit them to the government in exchange for cash following a gun massacre on the island of Tasmania in 1996. The government confiscated about one in five civilian firearms, and the rate of suicides declined by 80 percent."


That article is saying basically pointing out simple known facts. These new laws want work, in fact the only gun control that will ever make a real decrease in "gun violence" is a total gun ban. Sorry folks, that's just true.

Then they point out that's an idea that not even on the table for our current president. And that the public majority opposes a ban. Nowhere in the article that I saw, did they call for confiscation. They simply pointed out that nothing else will make much difference.

"Obama, however, has said he believes Americans have a right to own guns . Polls show that while support for stricter gun-control policies has increased this year, a majority still opposes a ban on handguns. For its part, the Supreme Court has declared that the Second Amendment permits Americans to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense."


The difference in opinions on if the ban should be done is where we'd likely differ, but they didn't really address that. I can assume they're in favor of it, but it'd still be an assumption. Their simply wasn't much in that article I'd disagreed with, I'd take issue with a few things, but for the most part it's much better than most anti articles.

 

[Sam1911]

"One policy that proved remarkably effective in preventing suicides was Australia’s mandatory buy-back scheme. The country required owners of certain weapons to forfeit them to the government in exchange for cash following a gun massacre on the island of Tasmania in 1996. The government confiscated about one in five civilian firearms, and the rate of suicides declined by 80 percent."

Of interest here -- assuming that this statistic is accurate and not assailable for other reasons -- is that preventing suicide is not the siren call of gun control, and is generally only mentioned as a sort of follow-on when packing the "gun violence" numbers.

Start to talk about suicide and things get trickier. We want to reduce the number of suicides...well, yeah, but isn't that a fundamental right of every person? To decide end-of-life issues for themselves? Taking away people's guns specifically so they can't decide to end their own lives (well, at least quite that easily) is never, EVER, going to be the compelling alarm klaxon that drives people to support the Bloomburg, Schumer, Boxer camp. Nobody who's at all on-the-fence is going to go against other values they might hold and pull the voting lever for someone who promises to take guns away from potential suicides. Now you're opposing TWO basic rights -- the right to bear arms and the right to decide how to live and die for yourself. MUCH tougher sell, especially to "liberal" voters.

Suicide is sad and something to work on as a society, but it isn't SCARY, so it won't sell gun control. But without the suicides included the numbers touted by the gun control crowd start to look a little thin.

 

[Midwest]

Of interest here -- assuming that this statistic is accurate and not assailable for other reasons -- is that preventing suicide is not the siren call of gun control, and is generally only mentioned as a sort of follow-on when packing the "gun violence" numbers.

Start to talk about suicide and things get trickier. We want to reduce the number of suicides...well, yeah, but isn't that a fundamental right of every person? To decide end-of-life issues for themselves? Taking away people's guns specifically so they can't decide to end their own lives (well, at least quite that easily) is never, EVER, going to be the compelling alarm klaxon that drives people to support the Bloomburg, Schumer, Boxer camp. Nobody who's at all on-the-fence is going to go against other values they might hold and pull the voting lever for someone who promises to take guns away from potential suicides. Now you're opposing TWO basic rights -- the right to bear arms and the right to decide how to live and die for yourself. MUCH tougher sell, especially to "liberal" voters.

Suicide is sad and something to work on as a society, but it isn't SCARY, so it won't sell gun control. But without the suicides included the numbers touted by the gun control crowd start to look a little thin.

And the suicide rate in Japan is higher (where they DON'T have firearms) than the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
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[X-Rap]

There is no doubt that a ban/confiscation and prohibition of ownership is the only real treatment for gun violence and the sooner the country embraces that reality the sooner we can finally put the beast to bed.
I don't believe the majority of the public will support gun control by these means but the reality of knowing that all guns are capable of being used in violent crime and that use will be more prevalent as the "evil guns" are eliminated. They must be made to understand that grandpas old single shot will be in the sites eventually.
Along with prohibition our borders will need to be closed and firearms will need to be extremely regulated within LE and Military.
All this is probably impossible but the discussion needs to be made and the antis need to be confronted with the reality so when the silly question of "we've got to do something" comes up there is an answer.

 

[Jim K]

The Breithart article sounds like something by Hillary - innuendo, surmise, truth stretching, and plain old lies. I have the Washington Post of January 13 in front of me and it says no such thing, indeed nothing at all on guns.

That doesn't change the fact that on the subject of guns, the Post is simply insane. I have no doubt that the "final solution" for the gun "control" movement is a total gun ban, and that they would not hesitate at imposing a new Holocaust for gun owners. But they have not said that. Yet.

Jim

 

[elano]

We can not give another inch on gun rights people.

 

[X-Rap]

We can not give another inch on gun rights people.

Exactly, but the people must be told the truth and that is, that short of confiscation and all out prohibition there is very little that can be done to curb gun violence and then the freedom sucking oppressive machinery to enforce it would be more than anyone would take.
My point is that incrementalism doesn't work and has the same ends as tyranny only it takes longer. Sometimes generations but it will eventually come together.

 

[Jim K]

I agree, but we have plenty of real insanity from the gun ban gang to use against them, we don't need to make things up.

I had a discussion with a police officer friend who didn't believe me when I said the gun control people want to disarm police. I showed him a picture, from The Washington Post of last week showing a demonstrator with a sign saying just that, and also showed him a copy of The Saturday Night Special* with its extensive rants against the police and saying they should be the first to be disarmed. He was shocked that people he thought were on his side hated him (and all police) so much.

Jim

*by Robert Sherrill; the book has been called "the bible of the gun control movement."

JK

 

[giggitygiggity]

When I think about it, I think that the idiot liberals should continue to promote confiscation of our firearms. That's what they want anyways and by voicing openly their radical approaches to curb our second amendment rights, it brings more focus to the issue and makes the liberals seem all the less rational and unconstitutional. It's better than Billary saying that she thinks guns are ok for sporting or certain purposes and someone on the fence saying, "ah that doesn't sound bad. I think I'll vote for her because it's not like she's banning guns altogether or anything like that." However, when these gungrabbers talk about confiscation and someone who respects the second amendment, but does not have a definite opinion about guns, it will hopefully be registered as an attack on a Constitutional right and sway that person to not side with the anti-gun liberals.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US, they have a lower gun suicide rate, but Japan never had a tradition of private arms or of a government protected by people volunteering to defend their government; they had shoguns backed by professional career samurai suppressing the people.

Japanese non-gun suicide methods very often endanger family, strangers, and EMT and ER personnel. A common chemical method of suicide used in Japan results in EMTs and ER personnel being exposed to poison gas emitted by the body. The idea that our gun suicides wouldn't attempt suicide if guns were banned is flat out unrealistic, like most gun control proposals: out of contact with reality.

"We're not going to eliminate gun violence, but we will lessen it," Obama said. "If we take that number from 30,000 down to, let's say, 28,000, that's 2,000 families who don't have to go through what the families at Newtown or San Bernardino or Charleston went through."

The 30,000 is mostly suicides, then murders, with less than one thousand accidents.
Gun accidents 2008 592
Gun homicides 2009 9,203
Gun suicides 2009 18,735

Take the 2011 FBI UCR handgun murder total, divide it into the 2011 Obama Admin estimate of private handguns, you get handgun homicide representing 1 out of 18,000 handguns in 2011. You could eliminate 99% of legal handguns and not reduce the handgun murder rate.

Max Ehrenfreund: "Obama has rejected the idea of confiscating Americans’ guns, but the evidence suggests that it is likely the only policy that would dramatically reduce gun violence in the United States."

The Victoria state police sent the Australian federal government a request NOT to increase restrictions on legal semiautomatic handguns because it would only stimulate the illegal black market and make the Australian gun violence problem worse, not better.

With America's history of responding to bans on alcohol, marijuana, "Lady Chatterly's Lover", leading to bootlegging of the same, what do gun banners expect to accomplish? Vent their anger over bad acts by bad people on the lawabiding gun owner? Who benefits when the result will be smuggling, illegal manufacture, bootlegging, with tacit support by millions who will not accept the ban as legitimate law?

 

[Deanimator]

This is more rhetorical ammunition for us.

Just use it to crush the "Nobody wants to take your guns" lie.

In the past when such statements have been thrown back in their faces, they fall back on "Only a few nuts..."

Then I throw right back at them with, "So, x is/are a nut/nuts?" If the Washington Post is "just a bunch of nuts", why are you QUOTING THEM on ANYTHING???

For them, there's no winning this argument. All they can do is lie... and get caught doing it.

 

[rbernie]

Of interest here -- assuming that this statistic is accurate and not assailable for other reasons -- is that preventing suicide is not the siren call of gun control, and is generally only mentioned as a sort of follow-on when packing the "gun violence" numbers.

This is a thread veer, but it does bear pointing out that a sizable amount of the 'gun death' statistic used by the anti's contains suicide by gun. If you remove that element from the gun death totals, much of their arguments lose a lot of steam very quickly.

 

[barnbwt]

"One policy that proved remarkably effective in preventing suicides was Australia’s mandatory buy-back scheme. The country required owners of certain weapons to forfeit them to the government in exchange for cash following a gun massacre on the island of Tasmania in 1996. The government confiscated about one in five civilian firearms, and the rate of [GUN] suicides declined by 80 percent."

Left out that little detail, did you WaPo? That's just dishonest journalism, right there. I don't even need to look up the Aussie's general suicide rate to know it didn't drop a full 80% because they stole 20% of law-abiding owners' guns (what, were the one-in-five fools who gave their guns up supposed to constitute 4-in-five of the fools who were previously offing themselves, and too stupid to figure out another way? Or were the lawfully-owned guns magically killing non-gunowners by suicide?)

+1 on the folks actually bothering to read the article, btw; it's not an endorsement of confiscation (well, not openly) so much as helpless flailing in the face of the obvious ineffectiveness of their favorite gun control proposals. The Post is dog-whistling for confiscation, though I'm not convinced they are actually aware of that, and believe they are adequately concealing their desires (perhaps even from themselves; I'm sure a great man gun-grabbers truly believe they do not want to harm gun owners, but also don't let it get in their way). The president and Democrat candidates, on the other hand; they are so sensitive to sound bites and over-analysis, they tend to know exactly what they are saying, and they know the talk of Australia means confiscation for the constituencies they are seeking to rally (uneducated urban minorities with little [legal] stake in the issue, and over educated urban elites terrified of them gaining any self-actualization through self defense)

"There is no doubt that a ban/confiscation and prohibition of ownership is the only real treatment for gun violence and the sooner the country embraces that reality the sooner we can finally put the beast to bed."
Part of me thinks (and really wants to believe) that is what we are seeing now, with politicians like the Democrats daring to talk about Australia/etc. The other part of me knows that progressives have generally gotten everything they've been after given enough time, showing far more diligent perseverance than their liberty-minded counterparts who tend to be distractable by the outrage of the week.

TCB

 

[MIL-DOT]

I just now got an NRA e-mail saying a bill has been created here in Georgia to have assault weapons confiscated. As it stands, this stuff isn't currently much of a concern in this state (thankfully), but rest assured, things are slowly changing.
The fact that ''they" own the dumbed-down school system from K through grad school, as well as both the news and entertainment media, means that time and the numbers are on their side.

 

[Mitlov]

Correction to the title of this thread: that assertion is not from the Washington Post editorial board itself, but merely a column that the Washington Post publishes (the "Wonkblog"). The Washington Post also publishes Eugene Volokh's column "The Volokh Conspiracy," which touches on Second Amendment issues on a regular basis and is consistently in favor of firearms rights.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/

This is a major distinction between the New York Times and the Washington Post; the NYT's editorial board has expressly supported confiscation (in an unprecedented front-page editorial); the WAPO editorial board's, to my knowledge, has not.

 

[BSA1]

Obama, however, has said he believes Americans have a right to own guns .

Obama has made it very clear what type firearm he supports Americans being allowed to own;

“If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barrel shotgun,” Biden said in an interview with Parents Magazine back in February. “You don’t need an AR-15. It’s harder to aim, it’s harder to use, and in fact, you don’t need 30 rounds to protect yourself. Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...-absurd-quotes-about-firearms-and-gun-owners/

 

[txblackout]

Exactly, but the people must be told the truth and that is, that short of confiscation and all out prohibition there is very little that can be done to curb gun violence and then the freedom sucking oppressive machinery to enforce it would be more than anyone would take.
My point is that incrementalism doesn't work and has the same ends as tyranny only it takes longer. Sometimes generations but it will eventually come together.

There is a lot that can be done to curb gun violence, yet it has nothing to do with regulating guns.

1) much longer mandatory prison sentences from violent crimes committed with guns (burglary, robbery, rape etc)
2) legalization of drugs and investment in drug treatment and anti drug marketing
3) allow people on welfare to get married (reduce single parent homes) without losing benefits
4) allow people on welfare to start working without having a cliff on benefts. Slowly decrease benefits at a fraction of dollars earned. For example if you make $1 at a job, you lose 10 cents of welfare benefits.
5) pay impoverished families money when their kids do well in school.

 

[greenmtnguy]

Agreed - the issue really is one of "human violence", where the gun part happens to be the handy, expedient method of inflicting the violent wishes of the human holding it.
As is usually the case with Democrats, they don't want to blame the problem on the person responsible - instead, they want to blame the environment, the system, the tool, and anything else besides the perpetrator. Until this is understood and accepted by the gun control group (which will likely never happen), their efforts will remain focused on the restriction of firearms and the rights of others.

I also agree that the inclusion of firearms-related suicides are critical to the gun control group's peddling of the high rate of "gun violence". Conflating the numbers of murders with the numbers of suicides allows them to greatly "fluff" up the numbers and make things appear much more dire than they are.