The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

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Originally Posted by NYBURBS

The same could be more easily said about most of the federal regulations and programs that the left wing in this country hold dear. Social Security, Medicare, Federal Labor regulations, regulation of intra-state affairs via the inter-state commerce clause, and the right to an abortion were all products of the early-mid 20th century progressive era, and many were decided by split courts if I recall correctly. That's the nature of our system, and I wouldn't hold my breath for seeing Heller overturned anytime soon.

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Oh, I don't expect Heller to be overturned. Not at all. But Dave32111 asserted that "the USSC has sided with the individual's right to keep and bear arms." That is not true. Americans do not have an unambiguous individual right to bear arms.

Various courts at various times have upheld gun bans in the face of Second Amendment challenges. There are many gun regulations that have never been argued before the Supreme Court. And the entire issue of whether or not states can implement gun bans is an open question.

For instance, this douchebag just had his concealed carry permit revoked for being a douchebag:

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/20...rol-rage-video

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Originally Posted by thombergeron

For instance, this douchebag just had his concealed carry permit revoked for being a douchebag:

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/20...rol-rage-video

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Interestingly, that person isn't an unknown guy. He was a PSC in Iraq. He is known for being caught in an ambush that led to the death of three PSCs. What happened is mired in controversy. The story was all over the internet. Plus, he created a shit storm by making a video of people shooting at targets with a cameraman standing next to one of the targets. He is simply a colorful character...to say the least.

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Originally Posted by notdrunk

Interestingly, that person isn't an unknown guy. He was a PSC in Iraq. He is known for being caught in an ambush that led to the death of three PSCs. What happened is mired in controversy. The story was all over the internet. Plus, he created a shit storm by making a video of people shooting at targets with a cameraman standing next to one of the targets. He is simply a colorful character...to say the least.

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Yes, I know who James Yeager is, and I'm familiar with his need to draw attention to himself by doing something stupid on the Internet every year or two.

The point being, the state has a right and an obligation to regulate this douchebag's access to and use of firearms, despite the holy Second Amendment.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

I think it's funny that the pro-gun people are anti-abortion, and the anti-gun people are pro-abortion,... I mean, pro-choice. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness......who writes this stuff?

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Yes, that hasn't slipped my attention either, though I think one could make a stronger argument for being in favor of gun rights since the mere possession of a weapon does not mean someone will die, but having an abortion will always result in the taking of a life. The 2nd Amendment does not abrogate a state's right to pass laws related to homicide, but the abortion cases do do just that.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

So many of the pro-gun lobby try to distract from the core issue with this kind of nit picking question. Just because you know the detailed specifications of this or that weapon is really rather irrelevent. The core issue is the obsessive concentration on the right to own these weapons, guns generally, despite the ongoing death count from their use by lunatics. Guns may not kill people, but they make it much,much easier for those who want to carry out massacres to make it happen.

Change the law and, if necessary, change your constitution. As i have said before it is NOT written in stone, You are a large and powerful nation with some of the most talented and creative and innovative minds in the world but you seem to lack the power to control the idiotic impulse to own weapons of death.

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I asked you that question because I find many that are opposed to gun rights have never actually held or fired one themselves. Virtually every handgun sold in the US now is semi-automatic, and the police all use semi-automatic handguns. All it means is that when you pull the trigger the spent casing it automatically ejected and a new round is loaded. It is not a machine gun where you can just hold down the trigger and it will continue to fire. And it's not an irrelevant detail since much of this debate is about banning certain weapons because they are semi-automatic.

PS- It takes 2/3 of the Congress to propose an Amendment and 3/4 of the States to ratify it, and that's just not going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

NYBURBS... these programmes should be "held dear" by everyone. They are designed to help make your nation a healtier, happier, safer and more just place. Unlike guns which are made for killing.

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Not necessarily, especially since one of the issues is federalism, or more succinctly, limited central government. England has a population of roughly 53 million, whereas just California and New York have a combined population in excess of 56 million people. Correct me if I'm wrong, but many English do not like the EU, and there is a push there to remove the UK from it, partly because you don't trust people in far away nations to make sound decisions for you. Well, that same issue resides here, and some don't really care for a small legislative body holding so much power over so many. So when you look at US politics it's not as simple as "hey that's a good program, people should love it!" because it's almost always more complicated than that. To give you an example, when the federal government decides to raise a trillion dollars in taxes, much of it will come from income taxes. They do it by scaled income levels, thus someone in New York City that makes 71k a year might pay 25% in income tax and someone in Alabama making 55k per year will pay 15% in income tax, even though when adjusted for cost of living they are basically at the same standard of living. That inequity is just one of the sources of contention in our politics, and of course I acknowledge that there are actual ideological splits about whether such programs should exist.

I do realise that, with Congress in the thrall of the ludicrous tea party, many GOP members virtually enchained by the NRA and the public's obsession with guns that a change to the constitution is not likely to happen... probably ever. But that doesn't mean that interpretations of it cannot be considered and that some greater degree of control can be introduced.

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 :)

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

I think it's funny that the pro-gun people are anti-abortion, and the anti-gun people are pro-abortion,... I mean, pro-choice. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness......who writes this stuff?

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Not always true. I love guns and have many of them but I'm pro-choice and would be considered extremely liberal by most people.

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I asked you that question because I find many that are opposed to gun rights have never actually held or fired one themselves. Virtually every handgun sold in the US now is semi-automatic, and the police all use semi-automatic handguns.

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I won't speak for Prospero, but I am a firearm owner and I have hunted with and have fired guns. MANY who urge tightening regulations on guns have first hand experience with gun. MANY of us practice gun safety and wish other owners would be more diligent too. I've have fired semi-automatics but I do not own any. I own an old bolt action Remington thirty 'aught six that has a fixed magazine that holds five rounds. After firing one round, the act of manually ejecting it also loads the next round into the chamber. It's a marvelous mechanism. More you don't need. When deer hunting I have never desired a faster weapon. No hunter worth his salt needs a faster weapon. When hunting fowl and other small game I used a single barrel, single round twelve gauge shotgun. To load you have to break it open, pull out the spent cartridge and shove in the live round. I never need more. No hunter worth his salt does.

Yes, manufacturers are shoving semi-automatic handguns and weapons down our throats and gun-enthusiasts predictably respond to the marketing. But marketing is not what we should consider when designing regulative law.

There is a huge gap between what we can do and what we will do. What I think we can do is limit magazine capacity and require background checks in all situations in which guns legally change hands.

We can also strike those laws that excuse manufacturers and gun owners from liability. Currently a gun can blowup in your hand and you can't sue the manufacturer. A kid can steal a weapon from his grandfather, kill someone and the old fart is immune from any kind of liability. Like auto-insurance, every gun owner should carry insurance on each of his or her weapons. None of these measure comes anywhere closed to infringing on anyone's second amendment rights.

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Originally Posted by LibertyHarkness

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 :)

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

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/

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Originally Posted by LibertyHarkness

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 :)

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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.

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Originally Posted by Ben

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.

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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).

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

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.

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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!

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Originally Posted by fivekatz

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!

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by NYBURBS

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.

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I guess my contention is that the right as interpreted today by the NRA in fact does not exist. The second amendment does not state that the right to arms has no obligation of registration, nor does it have a restriction on type.

Using the NRA's definition of this right, I have the right to own a fighter jet fitted with nuclear warheads and a half a dozen drones. Not only would I not need a license for the weapons, if I bought them from a private party I would have no need to even have the purchase recorded.

Since the NRA pivoted in the late 70's as an interest group for gun enthusiasts into a powerful lobby for gun manufacturers the issue has become dramatized in my opinion.

It is now painted as a total assault on individual gun ownership as opposed to an issue of having a responsible framework for gun ownership that contributes to the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

All I know is that the status quo is out of hand. Far more Americans per capita die from senseless gun violence than any other country in the developed world.

If the assault in Newtown had been by terrorists with IEDs instead of an American kid with assault weapons, the cries for a Patriot Act II would be deafening.

Laws as interpreted regarding guns today IMHO are as out of touch with the 21st Century as were the ideas that women could not vote and African slaves were 3/5 of a human being.

Section A of the Washington Post today was all gun talk, some highlights:

Reagan was pro gun control in 1968 because he was afraid of the Black Panthers walking around strapped. Back then the NRA accepted new gun conrol measures because it didn't affect sportsmen.

One of the presidents of the NRA had shot and killed a 17 year old kid, got off on appeal,,,self defense.

The NRA played a big part in Gore's loss for President, they swayed Democratic gun owners in Tennesee and Kentucky.

In the decade 1900-1910 there was ONE mass shooting in the US.
The Brady Bill had seemingly no affect on mass shootings.

The Brady Bill was shot full of loopholes (the gunshow loophole for one), rendering it ineffective.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsour...ug=gunchecks22

My damn memory is full of loopholes, Trishikins, but this chart would seem to prove that crazy is here to stay.


EDIT The math on my left chart doesn't add up with the chart on my right.
so nevermind

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Originally Posted by 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.

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This is what the government should stop. Not their right to sell, or the right to own, but the deliberate glorification, sexualisation, and intrinsic association with national identity.

When the tobacco industry finally admitted there was a link to cancer they said on television that "There would be no Marlboro man". It's time companies took responsibility for how they market guns.

I appreciate that the cultural dimension is getting a discussion here (see Prospero and Jenny's posts) because there's not a flattering portrait of gun owners to be painted.

To me, the emphasis on guns reflects the frustration and marginalization of many men who have failed to make the transition to adulthood. I know that sounds judgmental, but that's my take. They realize that being an adult man means doing things that don't explicitly call upon their full androgenic capacity like balancing a checkbook or showing up day after day to work. They yearn for conflict, for usefulness; all of the things they thought were going to define them as men when they were kids. They want to be tough, to be menacing, to be the bad boy and not the balding bureaucrat.

The social construct of masculinity is driven by the imperative to push to further extremes of ridiculous and out-moded behavior in order to define one's status as a man. In that sense what could be more masculine than buying a weapon that is more likely to blow off your child's face than harm an intruder? To them, being a man doesn't mean having utility in the world as we find it but in the world as it would be constructed by some poorly adjusted adults nostalgic about their youth. You can't take away their guns because with it you steal away their fantasies.

American author William Blum: "The crazed and the disturbed will always walk amongst us. What we must do is strive to deny them the facile ability to engage in mass murder. Everything else being equal, if the Connecticut killer's mother didn't have an arsenal of guns at home, including an assault weapon, the story would probably have been a very different one. Ah, but I hear you asking – on the left and on the right – so you wanna let the government have all the guns and the people nothing to defend themselves with? To which I reply: Do you really think the people could hold their own in an armed battle with the police and the military?"

Great point Ben. The idea that the citizens would over take a government run a muck in armed combat is pretty silly to me. Much more could be done through non-violent actions to bring about regime change should things ever come to a point where it would be necessary.

While mass murder tends to create temporary news cycles that create national conversation about gun safety standards (it IMO the real issue is about public safety not control) only a small % of the 11,000 a year that perish in the US do so in mass shootings.

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT
University of California at Davis Law Review:

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Bogus2.htm

Great read. 27 words with so many interpretations...

Most people have very squed perspectives. I understand that someone who doesn't claim a connection to a product or lifestyle etc. doesn't feel the need for that group to defend their ideals. An example of this could be related to abortion or gay marriage. A person that is'nt for gay marriage or abortion is indifferent to the subject when it comes under attack. When a group or gov't starts to make aggressive movements to remove the rights of individuals we must as a society defend these rights. It is clear that people will always kill. The manner inwhich they do it will always evolve. What if the next series of murders of innocent children is performed by doctors. Oh, wait that already is going on. Maybe we should ban that next.
Before long they will ban the size of soda you can drink. Oh, wait that one is being done now in New York. A very slippery sloap. Indeed.

Thanks for your absurd reductionism rileybrown

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A very slippery sloap.

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Slippery soap or slippery slope? In any case I agree, before a surgeon is allowed to wield her scalpel she is required to have an undergraduate degree, a medical degree and a degree in a her specialty (from six to ten years of high level schooling), a year or two in residency at a hospital and a State license (which require her to pass a very comprehensive examination). Can we really ask less of a man who wishes to wield a firearm, carry it in secret and walk among us? The thing about soap is it can slip in any direction :)

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

My damn memory is full of loopholes, Trishikins, but this chart would seem to prove that crazy is here to stay.


EDIT The math on my left chart doesn't add up with the chart on my right.
so nevermind

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Forgive me slinger, butt I do have to ask not only the source of your chart, but what it includes and excludes. What counts in this chart as a public mass shooting? Three people in a bar? Ten people in a courthouse? A drive-by killing two people in the street? Do the 2 mass shootings listed for the 1920’s include all the mass homicides carried out by organized crime at the time?

Every generation has its crazies. They are indeed here to stay. But they were always here. Look at America’s wild west (read Blood Meridian). They (the crazies) just didn’t always have access to semi-automatic firearms. In ancient Rome they had knives, swords and clubs. In the wild west they had six shooters. In the 1920’s organized crime was using tommy guns, but ordinary crazies were still using squirrel rifles and cavalry revolvers. Today our crazies wear kevlar, strap themselves with multiple semi-automatic weapons and spew death at a rate of sixty rounds per minute.

The crazies are always there, and imo probably in fairly constant proportions. The frequency of their murderous outrages increases with opportunity. Firearms increase that opportunity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...0eb9_blog.html

Now I must ask Duwe all the same questions, and how many Pinochios should we award him?

Excellent idea Trish - a teacher in every gunshop. Trouble is a lot are going there to buy guns... :-(

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Originally Posted by rileybrown195

Most people have very squed perspectives. I understand that someone who doesn't claim a connection to a product or lifestyle etc. doesn't feel the need for that group to defend their ideals. An example of this could be related to abortion or gay marriage. A person that is'nt for gay marriage or abortion is indifferent to the subject when it comes under attack. When a group or gov't starts to make aggressive movements to remove the rights of individuals we must as a society defend these rights. It is clear that people will always kill. The manner inwhich they do it will always evolve. What if the next series of murders of innocent children is performed by doctors. Oh, wait that already is going on. Maybe we should ban that next.
Before long they will ban the size of soda you can drink. Oh, wait that one is being done now in New York. A very slippery sloap. Indeed.

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You don't see anything different about gun ownership? You feel it's apt to compare it to the right of two same sex individuals to marry do you?

What is the tangible harm of two individuals of the same sex marrying in a secular society committed to the separation of church and state? Is it similar in scale to the harm caused by someone shooting their neighbor or entering a school and killing children? What is the upside of allowing unfettered access to gun ownership? At least with gay marriage you allow two consenting adults the opportunity to share their lives together in a legally recognized union. The only upside to owning military equipment is the false appearance of masculinity. With such weapons, there's almost no benefit and tremendous harm.

What is the fascination with guns? You say if they are banned other means of killing will be invented. Why do you want to have instruments of death anyway? I'll suspend disbelief. Tell me the role that guns play in your life that you feel so threatened that they may be taken from you. They're devices designed to cause injury or death.

Maybe it's time to reflect on the origins of this thread, in which a gun supporter urged people to stock up on guns and ammo in case of an outright ban. As long as that kind of attitude prevails there is no hope of genuine reform.

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Originally Posted by robertlouis

Maybe it's time to reflect on the origins of this thread, in which a gun supporter urged people to stock up on guns and ammo in case of an outright ban. As long as that kind of attitude prevails there is no hope of genuine reform.

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Not much....? Not at all methinks. Congress will block any initiatives.