The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[Odelay]

within 3-4 months it will all be forgetten about and gun sales/ammo etc will be back to normal service in the usa .... then when the next mass shooting happens it will boot off again and the cycle will repeat itself ..

Getting americans to stop owning guns would be like getting the english to stop drinking tea .. never going to happen ..

my view anyway

You Brits are endangering everyone with your reckless tea drinking. Someone needs to put tighter regulations on it.

[Ben]

The Hitler gun control lie

Gun rights activists who cite the dictator as a reason against gun control have their history dangerously wrong:

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop..._about_hitler/

[Ben]

within 3-4 months it will all be forgetten about and gun sales/ammo etc will be back to normal service in the usa .... then when the next mass shooting happens it will boot off again and the cycle will repeat itself ..

Getting americans to stop owning guns would be like getting the english to stop drinking tea .. never going to happen ..

my view anyway

Libby, I think you're right.
Anyway, two thirds of Americans do not own a gun. I mean, take, say, Alex Jones. He owns 55 guns. Maybe gun ownership is addictive, is an addiction. (So, it's about 100 million Americans who own guns -- or 1/3 of the population. So, it's a bit of myth to say Americans are acutely gun loving, as it were.)
And, too, maybe we shouldn't have any weapons control. I mean, why can't I own, say, a rocket launcher -- ha ha ha!
And, too, it's a myth to believe one can ward off the government, as it were. How is one going to defend oneself against a government drone??? I mean, if the government is coming to get you, well, they'll get you.
I think a lot of gun ownership has to do with stark racism.

[fred41]

Libby, I think you're right.
Anyway, two thirds of Americans do not own a gun. I mean, take, say, Alex Jones. He owns 55 guns. Maybe gun ownership is addictive, is an addiction. (So, it's about 100 million Americans who own guns -- or 1/3 of the population. So, it's a bit of myth to say Americans are acutely gun loving, as it were.)
And, too, maybe we shouldn't have any weapons control. I mean, why can't I own, say, a rocket launcher -- ha ha ha!
And, too, it's a myth to believe one can ward off the government, as it were. How is one going to defend oneself against a government drone??? I mean, if the government is coming to get you, well, they'll get you.
I think a lot of gun ownership has to do with stark racism.

Without looking up statistics...I would say that is probably because a huge chunk of population lives in urban areas...areas that have more police protection, people less likely to hunt...and probably stricter gun laws (which means that they don't have one because they don't like them...it means they can't always get them-legally).

[fivekatz]

IMHO the second amendment argument is weak. The current SCOTUS is staked with conservatives that say they are constitutional literalists but that seems to only be when that stand supports their political views.

The amendment states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The amendment does not say that the right is without any restriction (types, quantity, need to register and license." Further it suggest on it surface that ownership is part of a well regulated militia (what we today call the National Guard).

In fact, while the language was modified in Senate committee as initial conceived by Madison the intent regarding ownership of arms and service in a militia was considered connected:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

The gun violence problems in this country run deeper than just guns but the ease which individuals acquire guns, including assault weapons is a HUGE problem. So is the glorification of violence in entertainment.

I know it is hard for Americans who are total wrapped up in our "exceptionalism" to accept but of the "exceptional" there are things in our country are exceptionally bad.

To equate freedom with the rights of individuals to own assault weapons and corporate pirates to pollute with impunity and apparent immunity are not signs of a free people IMHO.

You register your car, you get a license for your dog and without incredible restriction you can't own a man eating tiger. So why shouldn't there be limitations on gun ownership?

And BTW the best I can tell for all the NRA goes off on Obama the only action he took in his first term regarding guns was allowing guns to be carried in national parks. While the candidate they chose to support (Romney) had signed tough gun restrictions into law while governor of MA. At this point the NRA is just an arm for gun manufactures and the GOP.

[buttslinger]

Forget 1776, when I was 4 years old in the 1950s (geezer alert) I could roam the entire neighborhood, all the Moms were home all day, they all knew my name and where I lived.
If I peered through my blinds now, and saw a 4 year old kid alone, I'd dial 9-1-1.

I saw an episode on CSI-NY where a criminal made a plastic gun on his 3-D printer.

The future of FREEDOM is going to be a retinal scan that has your entire medical, criminal, and financial history, you'll be able to board a plane in 15 minutes.

Hopefully I'll be dead by then.

[fivekatz]

The future of FREEDOM is going to be a retinal scan that has your entire medical, criminal, and financial history, you'll be able to board a plane in 15 minutes.

We are probably a lot closer to that than we would like, some of that is the expansion of technology and belief that end justifies the means.

The fear that crime in general and acts of terrorism create have done this. Certainly many provisions of the Patriot Act are in total conflict with the fundamental freedoms most Americans assume we have.

But fear always tends to make people infringe or let others infringe on freedom. Our history has many examples from the internment camps for Japanese Americans, to McCarthyism, to Gitmo and the powers of indefinite detainment and warrantless wiretaps on US citizens suspected of terrorism that the Patriot Act permits.

But the creations of the databases you envision and having more sensible guidelines for gun ownership are IMHO two different issues.

The NRA has been quite brilliant in making any measure to create a safer environment around weapons that kill somehow seem equal to an assault on freedom is amazing to me.

Guns kill 4 times as many people on our soil every year as the terrorist did on 9-11.

So basically it is guns 121,000 - Al Queda 3,000. Where does it stop?

I don't know but the way it is right now in the US is crazy and should be an embarassment to every American that a citizen can walk into a school with assault weapons and execute babies!

[NYBURBS]

We are probably a lot closer to that than we would like, some of that is the expansion of technology and belief that end justifies the means.

The fear that crime in general and acts of terrorism create have done this. Certainly many provisions of the Patriot Act are in total conflict with the fundamental freedoms most Americans assume we have.

But fear always tends to make people infringe or let others infringe on freedom. Our history has many examples from the internment camps for Japanese Americans, to McCarthyism, to Gitmo and the powers of indefinite detainment and warrantless wiretaps on US citizens suspected of terrorism that the Patriot Act permits.

But the creations of the databases you envision and having more sensible guidelines for gun ownership are IMHO two different issues.

The NRA has been quite brilliant in making any measure to create a safer environment around weapons that kill somehow seem equal to an assault on freedom is amazing to me.

Guns kill 4 times as many people on our soil every year as the terrorist did on 9-11.

So basically it is guns 121,000 - Al Queda 3,000. Where does it stop?

I don't know but the way it is right now in the US is crazy and should be an embarassment to every American that a citizen can walk into a school with assault weapons and execute babies!

The problem is that you cannot cherry pick which rights you like or dislike. It's like the far right with their attempts at censorship over the years, they didn't necessarily see those attempts as really abridging the right to free speech, but the reality is that it did.

I think 90%+ of the people out there would say there can be some regulation of weapons and gun owners, but the problem is degree. There is a fear, a justified one imo, that if given an inch people will take a foot. At the end of the day, I suppose it will be the courts that largely decide where this ends up. There is still decades worth of litigation ahead of us on these types of regulations.

[jennylicious]

When I was born my father got rid of every gun he had, to protect me and ensure I didn't grow up around guns. It was only when I was 16 and he considered me old enough to respect them that he began to keep them again.

So I find the idea that a mother who had a son with mental health issues and carried on with her hobby as terrible.

It's pretty clear that with all the gun controls that we have in the UK, the circumstances of the Newtown shootings could have been replicated. The gun her used was not his own, and belonged to a member of a gun club. Any similar restriction that was made in the U.S. in the wake of the Colorado shootings probably would had zero influence and would not have stopped this tragedy happening.

Also, nobody likes having power taken away from us. It's in our psyche that when we perceive we are losing power that we resist. If it was put to mandate, I suspect that the vote would be very close, and I wouldn't like to call it. I also think it would be close enough to justify further mandates for some time.

As my father is a gun enthusiast, I remember a lot of what was said when the law came into force in the UK. There wasn't a massive outcry like there would be in the U.S. for the simple reason of our relationship to guns. We didn't see them as some sort of National 'right', but acknowledged it for what it is. It is an instrument of death. It was what it was invented for, and it is what it is employed for.

If the U.S. want to stop further shootings, they need to fix a culture in which the gun is celebrated and desired as it is. The gun is always presented as something 'cool'. Which means people respecting them as a tool of extreme violence, understanding what the implications are, and then realising that they really are not positive items. They may be necessary, but that doesn't make them nice.

If they are necessary, then they certainly don't need any advertising or endorsement. So rather than banning them, how about illegal any positive endorsement of them instead? That means banning the NRA from their gun ownership promotion campaigns, ensuring they focus on their good instuctional work and safety programs. Stopping glossy advertisement. (The fact that Tour of Duty recently removed their web adverts for real guns from their web site is horrific)

If the gun culture in the US is curtailed, it will surely reduce the number of guns around kids everywhere that ownership wasn't necessary.

[Prospero]

Changing the culture is a pretty tall order. Even more of a challenge than restricting some of the weapons in my view.

In the US last week i looked at some of the gun magazines. Apart from the vast numbers of adverts, the articles are either very technical (understandable) or tend to glorify the weaponry - and its role in making America great. The position is essentially an aggressively nationalistic one. Lots of stars and stripes.

In the advertising there were several of scantily clad and glamorous young women - some girls in bikinis - toting big guns - conflating sexuality with weaponry.