Gun Control - Opinions?

[bedstuy]

I would create a gun registry, try to raise the price of guns and focus on taking illegal guns off the street.  That seems like a good plan.

I don't understand wanting to ban automatic weapons.  The very tiny number of legal ones are NEVER* used in crimes.


(unless you don't understand what "automatic weapons" means, which wouldn't be surprising as gun control fanatics don't ever seem to know their trigger from their "shoulder thing that goes up", but your OP does seems to understand the difference)


*well, once, 60 years ago, by a cop that went nuts if my memory is correct.

Scud missiles aren't often used by criminals.  I guess we should make scud missiles legal.

Isn't the fact that something is illegal and isn't being used by criminals a good thing?

[bedstuy]

Do you think if we made scud missiles legal (assuming they are, as you suggest illegal in the first place....which I'm not so sure of.  You probably can't shoot one off with a warhead on it, and you'd have to get a lot of paperwork and coordination and such, but civilians can put sh**t in space) there would suddenly be a bunch of criminals using them for......I have no idea?


and I have no idea what the last part means at all.

So, like many of the insane people on Atlas, you oppose all regulation on anything that could be used as a weapon?

You would support open sales of pipe bombs, plastic explosives, dynamite, rocket propelled grenades, shoulder fired surface to air missiles, sarin gas, etc. to the public?  Should anyone be able to go to the store and buy those types of weapons?  I'm just trying to understand your position.

[bedstuy]

Do you think if we made scud missiles legal (assuming they are, as you suggest illegal in the first place....which I'm not so sure of.  You probably can't shoot one off with a warhead on it, and you'd have to get a lot of paperwork and coordination and such, but civilians can put sh**t in space) there would suddenly be a bunch of criminals using them for......I have no idea?


and I have no idea what the last part means at all.

So, like many of the insane people on Atlas, you oppose all regulation on anything that could be used as a weapon?

You would support open sales of pipe bombs, plastic explosives, dynamite, rocket propelled grenades, shoulder fired surface to air missiles, sarin gas, etc. to the public?  Should anyone be able to go to the store and buy those types of weapons?  I'm just trying to understand your position.

You're the Carl Lewis of jumping to conclusion.  What in my post made you think I would want sarin gas for sale at Wal Mart?  But some of those things are already perfectly legal, or at least their ingredients are, you just again, go through the proper channels to acquire them.  Just like automatic weapons (you know, the thing that started this insanity?), legal, but very difficult to  get a hold of.  I'm fine with that.  Perhaps you'd like to add handguns, and scary looking semi-automatic rifles to that category of items.  I disagree, but it's a conversation that can be had.  Jumping to the conclusion that I want to let toddlers buy RPGs in the toy aisle at Target is not going to help that conversation.  It's EXACTLY like saying people that are against immigration are racists.

I was just asking you to say where you would draw the line.

Some atlas posters would say anything that could be a weapons or "arms" must be unregulated by the government, citing the second Amendment. 

Some atlas posters would say we shouldn't regulate the sale of any type of weapon/explosive, because people could assemble the weapons themselves.  IE, since you can make an improvised bomb out of fertilizer, you should be able to buy C4 plastic explosives without any license or regulation whatsoever.

To me, it's a calculation of the risk of the weapon vs. the utility to the public.  Something like a firework is an explosive, but it is not a huge risk as a weapon and it has recreational value, so you can make it available for consumer purchase.  Something like dynamite ought to be tightly regulated, because it has a large risk of being used as a terrorist weapon and it has no utility to the general public.  It's the same calculation for various types of guns.  A shotgun for hunting ducks or whatever is not a major risk and it has an actual use, hunting ducks.  A machine gun has no use besides killing people and it poses a major risk, so machines guns are rightly banned. 

[bedstuy]

I basically support whatever gun control will lower the murder rate. In principle, I don't care about the "right" to own a gun.

Then you support increased gun rights?  The violent crime rate is down in the US.   So not only are we getting calls for outright bans, but keyboard warriors wanting to confiscate citizens property.  Why is this place such an echo chamber?   A gun is a tool.  A very important tool for recreation, self defense, and  putting food on the table.   I don't think anti gun rights keyboard warriors have any idea actually how many guns exist in the US especially in certain regions.   If guns really were an epidemic problem you would see these shootings in vastly different places.  Gun Ranges in Alabama, a Gun Store in rural Iowa.  The places with strong gun cultures are not seeing these mass shootings. 

Why?  Because these shootings are all done by cowards.  They choose intentional soft targets where they won't be shot at back.  Most of the guys including the Columbine shooters, the Virginia Tech shooter and the latest shooter all shot themselves when authorities arrived. 

The common factors of these shootings are soft targets, areas without a strong gun culture, and cowardly beta males. 

That's a bunch of crap.  Obviously, most gun deaths are not from a few high profile mass shootings.  Most gun deaths are suicides, accidents and homicides during violent confrontations between people who know each other.  But, it's not like nobody has a gun in Colorado or Virginia or Southern Oregon.  Those places are not exactly Marin County. 

If your theory was right anyway, there would be tons of mass shootings in Western Europe.  After all, they have a vastly weaker gun culture than anywhere in America. 

And, since this is Atlas, here's a map of the US.



It basically looks like the Republican states have more firearm deaths. 

[bedstuy]

I support reasonable regulations, but I'm getting fatalistic about it. Like say background checks. For many, many people who've committed gun violence, a background check wouldn't have turned up anything that would have prevented them from buying a gun.

Or waiting periods. The idea is a fine one, that you don't want it to be easy for someone prone to violent anger to obtain a gun when in the depths of that anger. But then after the waiting period, the person who is prone to violent anger has a gun in his possession for the next time, right? Did the waiting period just delay things?

Background checks will only really work for people who have a criminal record.  Waiting periods will only work for people who cool off or lose their opportunity to murder someone during the waiting period. 

But, there's no silver bullet when it becomes to gun control.  It's silver buckshot.

The real question is, how do you sell gun control, both to the general public who wants these high profile events to be stopped, and to the Republican leaning elements of the country who are awful gun nuts? 

I actually wonder whether we need to change how we sell gun control and stop calling it gun control.  Maybe we sell gun control as crime/terrorism control, and explicitly paint the problem as terrorists and scary black/Mexican criminals.  So, we always say, "Oh, we have no problem with the good gun owners!  We just need to pass regulations to focus on the criminals who aren't being responsible and can't be trusted like good, Christian white men can."  That might work better.