The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

I posted a couple of comments on the Las Vegas murders in the Dipshits thread in General Discussion, but I wonder what more can be said about this incident that concerns gun ownership and gun control that has not already been said. There was a weariness in the reporting last night and the exchange of views on the news programmes, but I still wonder how it is possible for one man to legally obtain (assuming this is how he obtained his weapons) the kind of weapons that kill and injure so many people in minutes, not hours. Surely at some point if you cannot limit gun ownership, you can at least take military grade weapons off the streets? But we have been here before, and I suspect it will happen again. And again.

At the very least, I would like to see the Assault Ban reinstated. But given that Congress did nothing after Sandy Hook, it's not likely this Congress will do a damn thing about gun control - except pass the current proposal to deregulate silencers.

It's obvious that guns need to be more tightly regulated. But unfettered gun ownership has become a part of right's cultural identity. Any move to strip away that crucial part of their identity now will only re-enforce it. Identity trumps reason (pun intended). Every week a toddler shoots somebody with a gun. Right now, Congress would rather ban toddlers than regulate guns.

Because of the Vegas shooting, gun stocks have spiked in anticipation of increased sales. Why would sales increase? Gun 'enthusiasts' will tell you it's for protections against shooters just like the one in the Mandalay Bay - as if arming the crowd of concert goers would've lowered the body count. The real reason gun sales will spike is that the 'enthusiasts' know - on a subliminal level - a good argument for regulation when they see one, and the spate of shootings across our nation, like the one in Vegas, is as solid an argument as nature can provide.

Seems that all there is on the various talk radio shows in the UK are interviews in which American pro gun activists (from a country with very little gun control and the biggest problem with mass shootings in the world) tell interviewers from the UK (a country that after mass killings in 1984 and 1986 implemented strict gun laws and has since had 1 mass killing in the last 20 years) that their is nothing that can be done to stop the killings and that gun control will not help at all.
Sometimes there just aren’t enough face-plant emojis in the world.

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny.

GUNS, I WANT them!
I'm an AMERICAN, you've got no goddamned right to tell me i can't have them.

And at the same time, backing the idiot who's telling North Korea they can't have nuclear arms!

i read recently that 3% of the US adult population owns half of the guns, with an average of 17 guns each. That suggests about 8 million people have an arsenal similar to that of the Vegas killer. Yet half of the country seems to want to believe this madness is normal and even healthy. Thank god I don't live in the US.

The most recent second amendment case, which I think has been brought up here a bunch of times is Heller v. DC. It was a 5-4 decision so the parameters of the second amendment might change if the composition of the court does, but it allows quite a bit of regulation. While a state cannot have a blanket ban on handguns or require all weapons be kept unloaded, it leaves open a ban on assault style rifles, and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons. Do not let a second amendment proponent bamboozle you into believing any of these things are off the table. The opinion was written by Scalia, so unless Gorsuch writes a majority decision in the future, the court is unlikely to view the second amendment right any broader.

Since it was in the dictum of the opinion it doesn't define mentally ill but would probably at least include any condition that involves a psychosis. It does not say anything about licensure procedures but since the Court has also said women have a fundamental right to have an abortion, we can use the regulation of abortion as an analogy. In that case, the woman has a fundamental right to get an abortion countered by the state's right to protect the life of the unborn child. In the case of guns, there is a fundamental right to own them, but this is countered by the state's duty to protect people from unlawful shootings.

What about requiring people to take safety tests or to own their gun contingent on maintaining a license which will require periodic renewal? What about waiting times to ensure they are not purchasing on impulse and that they are doing so for legitimate second amendment purposes, to protect themselves or fend off government tyranny? I do not follow the current laws closely enough but does anyone know what kinds of regulations short of bans are in use and could be helpful in cases where someone wants to stockpile weapons or get them quickly?

The gun proponents' arguments consistently rely on fatalism. If you cannot prevent the most deliberate, premeditated form of mass murder there is no point in regulating them. Yet it's clear even from Heller that quite a lot is allowed....what else would be helpful other than background checks, limits on weapons stockpiling, banning certain groups of people from owning weapons, banning assault style rifles and high capacity magazines???

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Originally Posted by broncofan

and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons.

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One interesting facet of that part of Heller is that a couple of jurisdictions extended Heller's reasoning to misdemeanor domestic violence convictions. The fourth circuit and the seventh circuit split on whether a state can prevent someone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from owning a gun. The fourth circuit said it's unconstitutional and the seventh circuit said the ban was directly related to the state's interests in protecting its citizens. There has been a lot of discussion about the connection between domestic violence and gun violence...it will be interesting to see if this specific type of law eventually reaches the Supreme Court.

The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the chance of homicide by 500%.
https://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broncofan

While a state cannot have a blanket ban on handguns or require all weapons be kept unloaded, it leaves open a ban on assault style rifles, and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons....
Since it was in the dictum of the opinion it doesn't define mentally ill but would probably at least include any condition that involves a psychosis.

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I wonder if there is a procedural weakness in the 'mental illness' argument? I looked up the repeal of the Obama Presidency's ruling that attempted to make it harder for people with a 'mental illness' to purchase firearms -in fact it never came into force because it was due to take effect in December 2017 but the revenge process began shortly after the inauguration. But in fact there already exist mental health provisions making it illegal to sell guns on the following basis:

(a) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease:
(1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or
(2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.
(b) The term shall include—
(1) A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and

(2) Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b.

Under the Obama rule, information from the Social Security Administration regarding mental disability benefits would be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check database for use in firearm background checks.
http://www.snopes.com/congress-gun-legal-mental/

I am not saying the system is flawed, but if an individual is not on medication, has not been arrested or detained during which his or her mental state became an issue, or been reported by a family member or someone who knows them, how can a gun shop know if the person looking at weapons is, underneath their calm and reasonable exterior and with the right paperwork, seething with rage sufficient to slaughter innocent people?

If the answer is 'you never can tell', or if someone normally placid flips because of one or a sequence of unfortunate incidents, there are no mental health safeguards. What this does is put the weight of the argument back on the nature of weapons, and whether or not it is easier to ban certain types of weapon rather than weapons themselves, if as we are told, owning a gun is as American as Apple Pie and Baseball. On this basis a weapon that can fire multiple rounds a second ought really to be in the military not the mansion, and there is no justification in hunting either. I guess if you need to fire a thousand rounds at a deer to kill it you should probably stay home and play Warcraft rather than pretend to be a hunter.

The problem is that on BBC last night a resident of Mesquite stated candidly that any attempt at gun control that took guns away from Americans would be the basis for a civil war. I don't know how far one can go with this, it may be a division that is as deep as race and class, the division between that 'coastal' and 'flyover' America, and I don't know if this is a division that can be healed.

Critical analysis of the Constitution is futile, it no longer matters what the word 'militia' means either in its original context, when Washington wanted to resist the formation of a standing army, or today, when it endows every citizen to own a gun regardless of the existence of armed law enforcement, the National Guard and the armed services. If the Supreme Court were to offer an alternative judgement to Heller -v- DC and limit gun ownership, the party of the King would probably seek to abolish the Supreme Court, but it would raise the question -how would it be enforced? And, even if it reduced the volume of new gun sales, there are already a staggering number of weapons at home, waiting to be locked and loaded. Scary!

It is difficult to implement a ban on weapon ownership based on mental illness because as you say it requires that the person has sought help or there's been some sort of intervention. If gun ownership is really important to people and it could be forfeited by seeking help, they may not do so which is a consequence worth considering. Those provisions are useful, and it's possible that states can pass their own restrictions.

At least three of the last several shooters had severe mental illness that could have prevented them from owning guns if their state legislature had passed an appropriate law. James Holmes, the movie theater shooter in Colorado, was seeing a psychiatrist and was taking antipsychotics for what was probably a psychotic disorder. Aaron Rodgers, the LA shooter, was prescribed an antipsychotic for schizophrenia but refused to take it for reasons of his own. And Jared Loughner, the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords, had a more severe psychosis than the previous two but I don't think was seeing a doctor. If there were good mental health guidelines in place, the first two maybe would have been flagged as unsafe to own a gun and their information could be put into some registry, but not Loughner if he hadn't seen a doctor.

I haven't thought about the 2nd amendment's purpose that carefully but I think that unfortunately Scalia wrote in Heller that the prefatory clause to the second amendment did not limit it. In other words, even though the text mentioned one purpose of the 2nd amendment to be the formation of a militia, that is not the only permissible purpose according to the court! So, as of right now, the second amendment allows people to own guns for self-defense, to potentially fight government tyranny, and to form a militia. It does not leave a ton of room for regulation...the entire idea that owning a gun should be placed alongside civil rights like speech, right to a trial by jury, equal protection under the law is unusual to me and seems obsolete in most ways. The truth is that we no longer have a society where people act as their own police force, as their own revolutionaries or form ad hoc militias...it may seem like a vulnerability to those who are afraid of various forms of tyranny, but it is also the consequence of having institutions we have developed some faith in.