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New York Passes Landmark Gun Law
New submitter mallyn points out that the state of New York has become the first state to pass a new gun control law since the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary last month.
"Called the New York Safe Act, the law includes a tougher assault weapons ban that broadens the definition of what constitutes an assault weapon, and limits the capacity of magazines to seven bullets, down from 10. The law also requires background checks of ammunition and gun buyers, even in private sales, imposes tougher penalties for illegal gun use, a one-state check on all firearms purchases, and programs to cut gun violence in high-crime neighborhoods. ... New York's law also aims to keep guns out of the hands of those will mental illness. The law gives judges the power to require those who pose a threat to themselves or others get outpatient care. The law also requires that when a mental health professional determines a gun owner is likely to do harm, the risk must be reported and the gun removed by law enforcement."
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is expected to propose a new federal assault weapons ban later today.
Considering how easy it would be to set off some of those cheap Blue-Rhino propane tanks and get a similar death-toll, I hop that NYC is going to have gas control next on the agenda.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
No criminal will dare violate the law now.
It won't matter a bit...
Until the underlying problem gets solved this is just political theater. (And hidden political theater since this was passed so quickly behind, for all intents and purposes, closed doors with no public discussion by the NY legislature.)
And why is this on /. he asks?
Given the speed of beauracracy, I'm absolutely sure this is a well thought out piece of legislation, which balances freedom with security. Fortunately, mental health professionals are the appropriate people in our judicial system to deny personal liberties, and that stigmatizing gun owners will help bring together a society that is being split on ideological lines.
Will they be grandfathered in? I have a feeling gun shops will hoard "assault weapons" and higher cap clips before the law goes into effect
Since this is slashdot - let's talk about the new tech systems:
So will mental health professionals be required to do a check against gun owner databases? Will a mental illness database need to be created so that potential gun buyers can be screened at purchase time? How about house-holding - if someone in the same residence is a registered gun owner, will they be forced to surrender their weapons?
So, let me start this out by saying that I'm a damn sight from being a Republican, much less a gun nut. And yes, there are gun nuts - we all know the type.
Having said that, I love how NY (and for that matter, everywhere else) doesn't give a hoot in hell whether or not any actual evidence backs them up when laws like this get passed, much less track the results of what they have passed. It's a platitude, but true: criminals and other assholes could give a toss less whether or not they are breaking gun laws when they shoot someone. Regular folks are the ones who care about the law and mostly try to follow it, out of fear if nothing else.
And yes, the second amendment doesn't mean a turkey in every pot and a Bofors anti-aircraft gun in every garage, but god damn - every time the government tries to take away something that anyone used to have I need to ask myself, "Do I trust the government?", the answer to which is almost always NO. I'd rather have a hillbilly with a M-16 and the stars and bars hanging in a window living next to me than have The Man start confiscating guns "for our own good", that's for sure.
The law does contain a lot of really beneficial improvements that may well improve things, but the "one-feature" test for so-called "assault weapons" will apply to a rather large number of common sporting and competition guns, requires that they be registered within the year, and once registered these now-banned guns cannot be sold or transferred to another New Yorker -- they can only be transferred to a licensed gun dealer or to an out of state buyer -- even if the registered owner dies.
Not even legally-transferrable machine guns, what few there are, are so strictly regulated.
De-grandfathering pre-ban magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds is asinine (are people supposed to turn them in?), as is banning any newly-produced magazines with a capacity greater than 7 rounds. (You can keep your current 10-round magazines but you can't load more than 7 rounds into them.)
They could have kept such absurd provisions out of the law and people probably would think that it's a reasonable, if somewhat restrictive, law that may do some good stuff...but those extra provisions go way too far.
I know that all the NRA fans will come up with all kinds of suggestions for why making killing easy is supposed to make the world safer, but from a very safe country where guns, even in the hands of law enforcement, are an extremely rare sight, I say: Hurray for sanity and common sense!
During the "lame duck" session of the IL 97th General Assembly, our Dear Leader Rahm and Governor Jello tried something similar, but even more far reaching banning all semi auto and pump firearms. We were lucky that that bill was so over the top even many non gun owners called to object. The gun groups were organized because of the "internets" and we filled the voice/email boxes of our reps and emptied their fax machines.
I'm sure "they" will try again, but now in the daylight instead of middle of the night back room deals.
Living in places like Illinois and New York we see first hand the difference of being ruled versus represented.
It's not over. Hopefully our 2nd amendment will protect us from unjust laws. This is whole push to disarm America is not really "safety for the children". It's about power of the elites. they don't like the slaves to be armed.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Of the ~750 murders with firearms a year in NY, 5 were with rifles of any kind... So, banning "assault rifles" is nothing other than a feel good measure to make idiots feel like they accomplished something.
All of this is nothing more than a circle jerk. They don't care about preventing real violence. Like bureaucrats, they want to pretend they are solving the problem but are actually doing nothing.
This shows that everyone against the Walmart can easily have the store chain banned.
They sell everything needed for mass destruction, and guns aren't even needed!
Gasoline, Vaseline jelly, and Tupperware = napalm
Plastic jar, nails and screws, fertilizer, newspaper, and matches = shrapnel bomb
Bleach and ammonia = mustard gas
Any one of these (let alone all of them together) would bring as much destruction, pain, and misery as a gun.
With this, our government has shown it cares not about the actual cause of the destruction, only the device that caused it and the people/places that sell it.
Time to pressure them to ban the Walmart and arrest anyone who shops there!
... does that mean this legislation is a worthless waste of time?
Actually, it does make a lot of popular guns illegal, and they are only cosmetically different from guns that remain legal. I'm sure that will fix everything.
Considering how easy it would be to set off some of those cheap Blue-Rhino propane tanks and get a similar death-toll, I hop that NYC is going to have gas control next on the agenda.
But ... but there are regulations on gas, how you transport it, who can drive the truck that transports it, where you can park it, where you can store it, etc. What sort of ineffective troll are you?
Nobody's TERKIN YER GERNS
Yet. This little gem. The law also requires that when a mental health professional determines a gun owner is likely to do harm, the risk must be reported and the gun removed by law enforcement."
Is ripe for abuse, and I will enjoy seeing this bitch slapped down by the federal judiciary faster than you can say Zen Fascism. After all no bad law has ever been passed in the emotional furor after a tragedy.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
But the law itself is illegal. The Constitution says 'here's what the Feds can do. The rest is up to the states (and the people)." So either the Feds can regulate guns or they can't. If they can, the states can't. If the states can, the Feds can't. Which is it?
So when it is determined that a gun owner needs to be relieved of their firearm by law enforcement (because they are no longer defined as able to own it) is the state going to re-imburse the owner the value of the gun? Would the funds come from some fund from gun sales tax? Are they temporarily taking it with the intention of returning it when able? Where will they be safely stored?
-Xen
Because if there's ever a time to enact new legislation that has the potential to send previously law-abiding people to prison while being summarily ignored by the criminal element, it's while people are enduring emotional turmoil brought on by a significant tragedy. Look how well the PATRIOT act worked!
Sensible changes to how one legally acquires a gun and increased penalties for violence. Nobody's TERKIN YER GERNS. See how easy that is?
Really? Reducing already low magazine capacities by three (3) bullets and forcing Walmart to run a background check every time someone buys a box of rat shot? Making illegal criminal acts "more" illegal, that makes you feel safe and good about the whole thing?
I"m sure it'll make a huge difference in the number of shooting deaths in the ghettos. /s
Actually, they are. Detachable mag and one "military style" feature is now an evil "assault weapon". Owners have a brief period in which to sell them out of state. Seven round mags are simply not available, so just about all that's left are revolvers and old fashioned rifles.
I suspect this is a troll, but in case it isn't. The reason people are outraged at this, is the 7round restriction, not the new penalties, or background checks. No one makes 7 round magazines today, even for low capacity handguns. Various sports will have to change their rules, manufacturers will have to re-tool, and small business owners will go under as they are stuck with shelves of items they cannot legally sell, all so he can say he "did something". Bravo on the background checks, new penalties are redundant if we would sentence sanely to begin with.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
There are some things that *ARE* being taken. M1 Garand has an internal magazine that holds 8. When you load it you load a clip of 8 and press it into the magazine. Because you have to load the gun with a full clip you are loading too many bullets into the gun when you load the gun (even if you then immediately remove one bullet from the gun, you are a criminal for having put 8 into it at once. Legally using this gun is very questionable in NYS right now. Does the gun count as a relic? It's greater than 50 years old on design, but there have been a large portion of these guns rebuilt in the last decade with new wood, etc. Does this affect the relic status?
Do you Gentoo!?
Of course you never wanna let a crysis go to waste.
I don't have a sig.
It isn't sensible as far as requiring outpatient treatment for people with mental illnesses. Who pays for it? Not New York State. So now they are forcing people to pay for treatment and if they can't pay then they have to face CRIMINAL penalties. They have essentially defined mental illness as a crime for the uninsured (which is extraordinarily common for people that have mental illnesses). If they would have FUNDED the mental healthcare then this law would be reasonable. But that costs money, so they might as well make more people with mental illness into criminals.
Sounds reasonable to me. There is no reason for anyone to have such a weapon, other than to cause mass mayhem.
2^3 - 1 doesn't seem right. 2^3 is much better.
The 14th amendment has been ruled as such that any restrictions in the bill of rights on the federal government also bind the states. If these laws would be unconstitutional for the federal government then they would be unconstitutional for the states.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I do not understand how any of these reduced clip laws, or assault rifle bans, get passed when it is supposed to be legal to operate and join a militia and to have the ability to fight your own government if they turn tyrannical enough.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Well, it does tie in nicely with the article about printing a 30 round mag. Will 3d printers be restricted in New York?
Banning guns, it's a bandaid act to make the politicians feel achieved. It's a false way of feeling like they did a job. In the end It disrespects the constitution, and the 50+ million legal gun owners who haven't murdered anyone.
and no, the founders most likely never foresaw machine guns and rocket launchers. But they learned from thousands of years of history that standing armies, soldiers that are bored with no wars, will turn on the citizens. This can be noted in the small towns with bored police... This can be seen across the world as we know it now. when the citizens cannot defend themselves, the government get's arrogant and diminishes the freedoms of the people. this is what our founders saw, and fought against, and it is what they know will always be the case. So they built into our constitution a way for the people to control government. Even they saw, 20 years later, the government was already too big for their liking but flew out of their hands.
Nationalism? Nah, we're a police state that's a beacon to those Communist nations, bent on proving that we are God.
Considering murders from rifles (of any kind mind you) account for 5% of murders by firearms, apparently they don't cause this "mass mayhem." But, lets not allow facts to cloud your emotions.
Hey, let's apply these same changes to your right to free speech, this should be easy.
You can only write up to 7 paragraphs in an article.
Any web form that allows you to put more than 10 paragraphs into an article has to be destroyed or sold out of state.
You have to have a background check before submitting your article to anyone but immediate family.
You can only buy your text editor from a licensed dealer.
Your okay with all of those restrictions, right? You should be because I can promise that you that speech and ideas have killed far more people than guns ever have.
Technical points that need further expounding:
-define "mental health professional"
-how does it handle "mental health professional" bias, either for or against gun control?
-what is the appeals process?
-what about just compensation for siezure of personal property worth thousands of dollars?
the magine thing is disappointing because its already been proven many of hundreds of times that magazine size has no effect, and changing magazines is not hard; its just like the "turn off your electronics on the plane" thing, its there for control purposes, not because it actually does what they claim (in this case, reduce violence)
the "assault weapons" portion is also disappointing because it is once again filled with vague ill-defined terms rather than words with actual concrete definitions, essential to actual legislation.
background checks for ammo is silly. for weapons themselves, logical, and frankly, i see it as a business opportunity. set up a booth at the swap meet, get the contract for it or whatever, rake in the cash. may not be much, and very likely will be set by state legislature to a fixed price, very much like the fixed price of a smog check service.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Another comment from ignorant anti-gun cultists. Many semi-automatic guns have magazines that support more than 7 rounds. I have a Ruger rifle that FROM THE FACTORY comes with 10 round magazines. I have NEVER seen a 7 round magazine for it. It's a hunting rifle for me, it's great for taking squirrels and rabbits that move around a lot. If I lived in NY, this gun would become useless. Yet someone could still easily buy and use 4 or more holsters and walk into a school with revolvers and shoot 10, 20, or more people if they wanted to. The law accomplished nothing except make a bunch of legal gun owners potential criminals. I also own a few 30 round magazines so when I go target shooting I don't have to reload as often. I can load them at home where it's easier and more comfortable. People who claim large magazines serve no purpose except killing people are just ignorant and don't know what they are talking about. People who claim a semi-automatic rifle can fire 6 shots a second are also ignorant. Three, maybe four tops. But then I can clear all 6 rounds out of my revolver in under 3 seconds, and reload in 3 more. so what difference does it make???
Last time I checked, the taking of property without due process is illegal. I doubt this will stand in it's present form. It takes a judge's order today to get a restraining order, it will be found that the police will have to get one to remove a gun from someone mentally ill, they can't just do it because some therapist says so. The government can't order me to sell something today that was legal yesterday. That's why pre-embargo Cuban cigars are still legal, along with many other grandfathered items in various laws.
Requiring back ground checks for private sales simply won't work. First, the FBI isn't setup to take them from private citizens. Second, why would I bother getting permission to sell a non-registered gun to a friend. Criminals already get guns from other criminals, I doubt if they will change their ways. Instead, thousands of people that now go to gun shows to sell guns they don't want anymore will simply stop doing it, reducing the supply and driving up the costs. If they want to make a difference, require anyone that sells more than 20 guns a year get a license. If there is a problem with private sales, it's not Bob next door selling to his buddies, it's the guy who is buying and selling to make a profit.
I doubt if much of this will survive any Supreme Court challenges. Cuomo and the NY legislature have just proven they are a bunch of ignorant people willing to pass ineffective laws just to look like they did something (and Obama is about to fall into that category). NY is going to lose some air travel business as people with guns avoid even passing through their airspace. I already do because of many cases where people just passing through had to spend a night and got booked on gun charges simply because the laws in NY are moronic and do nothing to prevent gun violence already.
I live in Mesa Arizona in a state that allows concealed carry without a license, Mesa remains below the national average in all violent crimes for cities of more than 500,000 people. Maybe if Cuomo and Bloomberg would work on figuring out why people in his state want to kill each other and focus on criminals, they might actually accomplish something of value.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Actually, rampage killers typically create meticulous plans over time, they don't cool off, they build pressure.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
This is "stuff that matters".
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Gun/Arms control is fascism plain and simple. And the people who support gun control are nothing better than enablers of genocide.
Obama needs a bullet in his head just like Hitler.
Welcome to the list :)
"Actually, it does make a lot of popular guns illegal, and they are only cosmetically different from guns that remain legal. I'm sure that will fix everything."
You can't go berserk with a hunting- or sports rifle, it's uncool.
Totally! We've only had, what, a few dozen mass gun shootings over the past decade? It's totally a knee-jerk reaction to take ANY form of control in response to an epidemic like that. We should totally wait; it won't be the appropriate time until at least a hundred more children are shot up, am I right?
"mental health professional determines a gun owner is likely to do harm"
So how long until everyone who wants to own a gun is considered likely to do harm? Note that lack of mental illness qualifier; Insane people are already not allowed guns, this allows some person to say you are mentally fine, but still cannot own a gun.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Sensible changes
[citation needed]
and increased penalties for violence
Studies have proven time and again that increased penalties don't significantly reduce violence. This is what is wrong with your side in this argument. You are not interested in facts. You are only interested in feeling good. You are not interested in freedom, because you are insufficiently responsible for it. So are many gun owners, but is that something that just happened or a situation deliberately fostered by our government, who wants us dumb so that we can be more readily controlled? How will giving up your right to meaningful self-defense (7 rounds? really? in a state known for gang violence?) increase your safety when the police have been shown to commit crimes at the same rate as the general population?
None of these laws are going to reduce crime. I will bet you a dollar that gun crime will in fact increase in NY after these changes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...along with every state legislator who voted for this expanded gun ban.
Violate the constitution? Oh that's right, maybe you think there is an amendment there which will let you keep weapons just so you can revolt against the government if it upsets you - maybe calling in a fake fire and killing a few government employees that come to respond to it. Is that example enough to show how utterly stupid the misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a self-destruct button is?
Not just ripe for abuse, but now borderline people will have more of a reason to lie to their psychiatrists about their inner demons. I can see APA hating this.
just came here to make a few points. "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." from the deceleration of independence http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html and, "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." 2nd amendment. the WHOLE point was a) to be able to defend from {Europe,India,Africa,unknown} and b) so that when the government gets to broken we can use guns, in the hands of regular citizens to push the reset button. Tell me this, with all the restrictions like above, how are you supposed to go against an M1 Abrams tank, or an F-22? you know the best funded military in the world 7 times over. "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." It has been declared this attribution is "unsubstantiated and almost certainly bogus, even though it has been repeated thousands of times in various Internet postings. There is no record of the commander in chief of Japan’s wartime fleet ever saying it. However the sentiment holds true, and without something like the new Red Dawn movie to "Magically" take out all the infrastructure. I can understand the need for some semblance of gun control i guess. would not want children cruising the streets with them. but why should they be that much different that they you get cigarets or alcohol?
It's also far too easy for alcoholics to get cars and drive them. Negligent car drives already face harsh penalties. And there are far too many irresponsible car owners in this country (US) that allow their cars to be used by alcoholics.
Did you have a point???
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
"New York's law also aims to keep guns out of the hands of those will mental illness."
At least they tended towards fewer typos.
(For the record: I make plenty, but I also don't get paid to write copy for international-level news stories).
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
more people die form just about everything esle other than guns. Are you for Blunt object control? death by vehicle control? how about cancer control?http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
So you are for prosecuting the gun owner in this case for not stopping her son who was never diagnosed with any mental illness and had no criminal record ...and could have legally bought the gun himself ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Oh good, now criminals can't and won't get guns and certain mags...oh wait, no, that other group. Regular people.
Nice! How about seven gallons of gas in your car? Cars with larger tanks to be destroyed or sold out of state. Or seven bills per politician?
My Ruger SR22 rifle comes standard with a 10 round magazine. I have never seen a 7 round magazine for it. Yet it's very useful for hunting rabbits and squirrels.
So much for the 'no one needs 10 rounds for hunting' argument....
My Beretta Bobcat comes with a 7 round magazine, yet holds one in the chamber. Will people that have it 'locked and loaded' be breaking the law??
My S&W Mod 15 revolver carries 6 rounds. I've been timed at firing 6 rounds in under three seconds, and reloading in less than three more. And I know people faster than I am. Someone trained doesn't need 10 round (or more) magazines to shoot lots of people in a very short time. Should we ban handgun training next???
Cumo, Bloomberg, and Obama are all idiots trying to look like they are doing something. When in fact, I'm positive statistics over the next 4 or 5 years (if these laws even stand that long) will show how ineffective they are.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
That's what has me troubled by a lot of these new laws. I have 2 M1 Garands, one that was my grand fathers and one I bought through the civilian marksmanship program. From what I can tell they are now both assault weapons in New York.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
You know..... people have always said that the only purpose to a database of gun owners is to know who owns guns so they can confiscate them. Think about the law. it requires registration of all gun owners (a database). If a mental health practitioner reports a dangerous individual, without the database there's no way for law enforcement to know the person owned a gun.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Thank you for your input, AC. I'll try to explain why you're wrong.
There are millions of AR-15s owned by responsible people who will never use them to "cause mass mayhem". I own one and I use it for target shooting - I shoot paper targets at a proper range. Why do I need it? Well I guess I could use something else, but the AR-15 is widely available, easily customizable - there are lots of add-ons on the market that let me customize it to fit me just the way I like, it's cheap to shoot, and it's accurate. When I'm done with it for the day, it comes home with me and goes in the gun safe. A friend of mine uses his M14 (which is, by the way, 100% legal after this law even though it has 10-round magazines and has a much higher muzzle energy) for the same purpose - but his cost to shoot is higher. Most of the people who I shoot with at the matches also have AR-15s for the same reasons.
Other people use their AR-15s for hunting or for self-defense in the home (I would argue that a shotgun loaded with bird shot is a much better option for home defense, but I digress). Because they look scary though, and because a few of them were used by troubled people to do evil things, now the vast majority of us - who will never use them irresponsibly - need to suffer.
I'm not going to risk making a flawed analogy, but I resent the fact that people who know nothing about the safe handling of firearms and who have obviously never been to a shooting range can tell those of us who do and have, our own business. I suspect (since we're on slashdot) that we can agree that rules by people who aren't "in the know" often have the tendency of being profoundly misguided.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
the rest is for the states (and the people). The second amendment is not part of "the rest". Would you think it okay for New York State to change its state constitution such that it can pass laws violating rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? It's not Fedgov so anything goes?
7 shot in a magazine is fine. Any hunter that wants more is just to lazy to change magazines. In a home invasion situation, if you need more than 7 shots to take someone down either: A) you are a terrible shot and more bullets would result in more property damage than safety or B) You are dealing with someone with superhuman capabilities, who is probably green and you just got him angry.
You won't like him when he's angry.
I just want to point out that the law as written will require:
Police Officers to have no magazines capable of containing no more than seven rounds (an unmodified magazine can hold ten)
Police Officers CAN NOT poses a gun on School Premises (S 265.01-A)
On a related note - who will pay for these changes (added background checks, more paperwork etc)?
http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S2230-2013
Could be tricky, since selling them out-of-State is a violation of Federal law.
You can legally sell out of state through an FFL, but not individual to individual.
Attention lemmings! The lines will be forming on the coasts! Both East (NY) and West (CA)! Time to act is limited! The cliff is near! Don't be left behind!
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I see these measures as being perfectly reasonable for a country needing arms to hunt or defend itself when it already has a standing army.
Beyond that, you're defending yourself or the American people from tyranny within the government. If you're doing that, you're technically committing treason so why would you care if you're breaking any other laws? It worked for the founding fathers.
Actually all magazines over 7 rounds (which includes the vast majority of handguns) have to have those magazines sold out of state within one year. Some older models have no lower capacity magazines even in production, which means that they become effectively useless.
So no, they're not taking the whole gun - just an integral part of it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Actually, It makes most semi-automatic firearms illegal. Everything but revolvers and large caliber handguns. Those Ruger 10/22's that many kids grew up with are now assault rifles. My Browning Medalist target .22, is now an assault weapon and if I lived in NY, would be banned.
No, but those nuts who are claiming that Sandy Hook was a government conspiracy to take away their guns and that the kids are safely hidden somewhere? I don't think I want those folks to own any guns. And the people who go on YouTube ranting about how they'll go on a shooting rampage if any gun control is enacted? I don't think I want them to own any guns either.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
is still a job. if you want to lower crime in general, then take steps to improve the economy - which (in the past) has meant the government getting out of the way.
I'm not opposed to gun control - I just don't think it will make any difference (except make politicians feel like they "did" something about the problem)
with my libertarian leanings satisfied, I'll point out that the only nation-state I know of to successfully manage "gun control" was feudal Japan (Samurai who had spent a lifetime perfecting their skills wanted protection from poorly trained peasants with guns).
If you believe that a primary function of government is to protect citizens from each other - then maybe we should be discussing repeal of the second amendment. Simply make it illegal for everyone (except the "government") to own guns - then be prepared to incarcerate everyone you find with a gun.
if THAT works, we could make all drugs illegal to cut down on drug addiction ... (after all making something illegal NEVER has unintended consequences)
on the other hand the pointless reference of the day: this debate always reminds me of the "Treehouse of Horror" episode where Lisa wishes for world peace - "He's got a board with a nail in it!" and "They constructed a board with a nail in it, but they won't stop there. They'll construct bigger boards with bigger nails, and then they'll construct a board with a nail in it so large, it will destroy them all..."
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
They must be going after rifles because they know they'll have an easier time banning them than they will with handguns. It has nothing to do with whether or not it will help anyone or not.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Heller VS DC all over again.
You also have to be licensed by state, which may or may not issue such license, and be checked by a doctor to be able to speak "freely". There are also should be "free speech" FREE zones, just to bring it in line with the Second amendment. After all, what is good for a goose is good for the gander.
Hitler shot himself. Using the phrase "just like Hitler" implies that he thinks Obama should commit suicide. While it may be argued that's in poor taste, it's not a threat.
"News for nerds" indeed. We don't come to Slashdot to read a day-late version of a story we've seen on many other general-interest news sites.
The M1 Garand is not the oldest 8+ round magazine weapon that is now banned. Here are some examples:
The 1860 Henry (colt) Rifle 1886 Lebel Mle1, 1888 Lee-Metford, 1889 Schmidt-Rubin, 1895 Lee Enfield, 1895 Mauser C/96 pistol, 1897 Winchester Shotgun, 1898 Steyr-Mannlicher pistol, 1898 Luger P08 pistol. These are all examples of rifles, shotguns, and pistols, which exceed 7-rounds in the magazine, AND WERE PRODUCED BEFORE THE 20th CENTURY!
We are afraid of weapons from the 1800's now, in New York State. More accurately, we are afraid of the person standing next to us, whatever their weapon of choice. WE ARE AFRAID OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS! That is what this new law is effectively stating.
p.s. All the weapons listed, except the Luger, have an internal fixed magazine. The magazine cannot be removed. I believe the state decided on a 7 round magazine, because all the cops would get pissed if they couldn't have an M1911 .45ACP.
IANAL but I am pretty sure he would need to make an actual threat or statement of intent. For example, he would have to say that he was going to put that bullet there, or that he is encouraging other specific people to put the bullet there, not that the bullet should be there.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Five weeks ago, Nancy Lanza probably considered herself a responsible AR-15 owner. After all, she owned the weapons to defend her and her family.
The problem is the difficulty in establishing who is an irresponsible owner until after the fact.
Media and politicians are framing this in completely wrong way . Virtually everybody has accepted this misinformation and virtually everybody is barking at the wrong tree. I don't know if it is intentional or not - but this debate should NOT focus on guns, but on the Constitution and Bill of Rights instead. Right to keep and bear arms is protected by Second Amendment. So you should ask whether those gun control laws pushed down your throats are constitutional or not. If not, then enacting those laws means abrogating the Constitution and it will be invitation for your government to formalize stripping citizenry of remaining rights granted by the Constitution. IF there is real need to enact some form of gun control that wouldn't be fully constitional, government should consider amending the Constitution itself (regardless of how long this process will take) and only after that it can work on gun control laws. I know this is idealistic or even naive: I'm aware US government routinely ignores US Constitution BUT letting them formalize abrogations elevates problem a new level.
Stigmatizing meantal health has killed more people than gun violence has in the military. Literally. We buried more soldiers last year from suicide than from combat and "combat related" deaths. That in the military which has a strong push to spread the message that it's good to go see the mental health folks and an aggressive, and at least somewhat effective, suicide prevention campaign.
I'm pretty sure you meant M1 or M1A. The M14 is capable of fully automatic operation. That aside, if your friend's M-whatever has a flash suppressor as most M-whatevers do, it is now on the banned list. That one feature a week ago was perfectly acceptable. But now it makes him a homicidal maniac who will be unable to control himself.
Oh no. You might have to use a less powerful toy. Your poor liberty and freedom!
Did you even read my post? If anything, I'll switch to use a MORE powerful toy because of this law.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
If she didn't keep her AR-15 properly secured, she wasn't a responsible owner.
An AR-15 in a gun safe is utterly useless for home protection (unless you want your assailant to give you maybe a 5 min courtesy call, so you can get it out, and loaded and have it comfortable. As it is you might have to find another hobby than punching holes in targets with guns. Oh no. Now I can clearly understand how the dragon-chasers felt when their hobby was ruled illegal. Shame the National Opium Association didn't speak out!
Sensible changes to how one legally acquires a gun and increased penalties for violence. Nobody's TERKIN YER GERNS. See how easy that is?
Sensible changes to how one legally moves around the countries, Nobody's is taking your privacy, but I'm sorry we need your papers to ensure you are not a terrorist/pedophile/boggy man.
Let's stop here and look at the numbers for vehicle deaths, firearm deaths, and poison deaths.
Firearm Deaths: 31,672
Motor Vehicle Deaths: 42,917
Poisoning Deaths: 33,687
Well to stop the motor vehicle deaths we are going to need roadside check points every 10 miles to ensure that you are driving safely and not operating your motor vehicle drunk. While we are at it lets also do random home inspections for your protection to make sure that you do not have any poison in your house. We both know it won't stop there. It will just be one knee jerk reaction one after another.
This new law puts all NY state doctors, more specifically, mental health professionals, at greater risk of retaliation by patients who later have their guns taken away. The medical establishment will increasingly be viewed as an extension of law enforcement.
As for visiting a doctor, even for a routine checkup, don't mention owning guns nor any other types of weapons, don't talk about hunting, one's views on gun control, etc. Avoid the topic entirely. With electronic records and mandatory reporting laws, what one says to a doctor is often far from confidential.
"WE ARE AFRAID OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS! That is what this new law is effectively stating."
Funny, I thought the need to own guns for 'protection' and 'just in case', and ESPECIALLY Concealed Carry was explicitly stating.
We ought to make drugs illegal, too! Let's end both problems, once and for all, with some simple legislation.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Ok, um, so I'm in the know here (see user name/uid). Also, I'm a Texan, so that possibly qualifies me by birth...
The weapons you are describing are military derivative firearms and by all rights, SHOULD be banned IMO. We, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing our firearms, incompetent at assessing who should have a firearm, and generally promoting the glorification of firearms use via the media, games, and certain aspects of our culture.
At the same time, we have tried to claim that the right to own firearms does not come with any responsibility. If your kid leaves his toys out, after several warnings, you, as a parent, would be taking a reasonable stance to put the toys away for him. The child (in this badly crafted analogy) has not demonstrated the responsibility that comes along with the right to those toys. Same for those of us in the gun culture. We have failed at our responsibility to safely possess firearms. We do not deserve them now.
You said something that I'd like to point out to be overdramatic in the least, and possibly flat-out manipulative; "now the vast majority of us - who will never use them irresponsibly - need to suffer". Can you please tell me how much you will suffer? If we combine the total suffering from all the people in the state who will lose their guns, do you believe that it is greater than the suffering felt by any combination of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims? If you want to bring suffering into this discussion, let's keep that perspective in mind.
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
Apparently, you've never heard of Constitutional amendments, there, Thogg.
I would argue that a shotgun loaded with bird shot is a much better option for home defense, but I digress
Shotgun, yes, bird shot, no. Bird shot tends to produce nasty-looking but very shallow wounds which will generally not stop a determined assailant. For an effective man-stopper, you need deeper penetration. Yes, that means that your deeper-penetrating projectiles will also penetrate walls better, but anything that will penetrate a human body sufficiently to have a prayer of stopping an attack will also go through some walls.
There are numerous web sites and YouTube videos that demonstrate the inadequacy of bird shot for home defense. Bird shot is for birds, if you need to shoot people use buck shot.
As for an AR for home defense, it's certainly perfectly functional, and actually doesn't create as much overpenetration risk as is often assumed, due to the tendency of the bullets to tumble and fragment. But a shotgun loaded with buckshot is a more effective man-stopper at close range and will overpenetrate less.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Limit the amount of people that you can kill
Last time I checked, there was already a legal limit on how many people you can kill... Unless you are in a situation of self defense, it's zero.
I know, I know... you are referring to limits on technology, in which case this law does nothing to limit the amount of people that you can kill.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Because it can open up security holes. The government was set up in a certain way to prevent tyranny. When you start restricting rights because they don't match the social norms of the current culture, you create a power vacuum when the people have their power thus reduced. Tyrants, even if they didn't cause the reduction of rights, will surely take advantage and fill said vacuum.
Car analogy: You find it slow to enter your car and your neighbors' dog sets off your car alarm. Why isn't it a good idea to remove the locks and alarm on your car?
Gun control does not reduce homicide rates.
Increased penalties are unlikely to help, and existing penalties already veer close to cruel and unusual punishment.
I don't own guns, and I don't want to own guns. I still oppose increased gun control as a matter of principle.
but I resent the fact that people who know nothing about the safe handling of firearms and who have obviously never been to a shooting range can tell those of us who do and have, our own business.
But isn't that part of the problem, that people with no understanding of the safe handling of firearms, with no training or respect for the damage they're capable of doing can walk in off the street and buy them?
No, no they should not!
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
We, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing our firearms, incompetent at assessing who should have a firearm, and generally promoting the glorification of firearms use via the media, games, and certain aspects of our culture. --Signed: The British Government.
There is a mechanic to change the constitution, and it's not called an "executive order", but rather amending the constitution.
But why bother when the partisan supreme court can just continue to find that "shall not be infringed" means "shall be infringed"? A bunch of two-year-olds could do better than that.
This will increase the number of calls into the check system by orders of magnitude. Today the usual NICS background check turnaround times vary by time of day and what else is going on (gun show weekend == one to four hour turnaround). And there's no mandate that the state return results in a timely manner, so access can be artificially manipulated by downstaffing the background check office or otherwise ensuring that the checks take an excessive amount of time. And there are stores which sell ammo but not firearms, so these will need to have access to the system.
Adding an extra hassle to each ammunition purchase pretty much guarantees that people are going to buy the maximum amount of ammunition allowable with each purchase, and also pool together purchases for groups of friends. Or just drive across state lines and buy their ammo in a "free state".
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Quick question about the Second Amendment:
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.
Has the U.S. ever assembled a militia? How would a militia be different from a national draft? Would gun ownership in the U.S. trump any ethical or religious objection to joining a militia?
From Wikipedia:
a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service.
It seems that a militia is more of an emergency task force. Perhaps something like this would fall under FEMA rather than the military?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm pretty sure he meant M-14. The M-14 is a semi-automatic .30 caliber rifle, not fully automatic by default except for specialized models. I shot one regularly when I was in the Navy.
I've always thought the M-14 with a synthetic stock was a fine weapon. They're accurate, rugged and have considerably more power that any 5.56mm round. You could use an M-14 as a tent peg and then run over it with a truck and it would still work.
* tendencies...got fooled by autocorrect, dammit.
> Doesn't matter to all the junior McVeighs here on Slashdot
It's a matter of imagination, not subversion. Nanny state dependents with no imagination can't understand that there are other ways to engage in mayhem. We live in a highly advanced technological society with potentially dangerous materials all around us. We also live in a free society where knowledge about how to use and abuse such materials is freely available.
An industrial arts class from the 80s could probably get around this latest attempt at legislating away technology.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bayonet mount on yours? Mine doesn't have one. Also the magazine isn't detectable. What part of the law makes you think they are assault weapons?
Do you Gentoo!?
Don't worry - the NSA already trapped this traffic and is sending the Secret Service to investigate as we speak. Carry on, citizen.
I may not want people like you to have Internet access either...
Web form? Text editor? Ha! Start with scrolls and quill pens (due to earlier bans and unavailability of various current technology).
That would bring the first amendment on par with the much-infringed "shall not be infringed" second.
Then the NFA/Hughes amendment (unconstitutional laws restricting sale of automatic weapons, suppressors, etc.) is a bit like limiting the number of computers that can access the Internet or publish anything to those made before 2000, with any software upgrade (or custom work) or transfer of any of these machines without a tax stamp, even if you had one but lost it, belong a felony, and then claiming that such a law follows the first amendment. Yeah. Have fun paying $20,000 for a computer with Windows 95 and Netscape Navigator.
The problem is that parts of new law aren't reasonable, especially the new 7 round magazine limit.
The standard magazine capacities right now are 8, 10, 12, 15, and 30. Nobody makes 7 round magazines for most guns.
So, basically, New York has just succeeded in making most existing semi automatic weapons with a magazine illegal to sell.
I seem to recall that the mother who owned the guns in the Sandy Hook shooting was held accountable... Long before the law got involved.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I would have no problem with politicians pushing laws that turn out to be unconstitutional if there were some penalties for these actions. If someone sponsors a law that turns out to have been unconstitutional they should be executed. Just think of all the people harmed by one bad law that might be on the books for decades before it finally comes before the supreme court and gets overturned. Everyone who voted for the law should be barred from running for any office ever again. Seems a fair trade to me.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Oh, for sure. I'm not disagreeing with the quality or design. It's an excellent rifle.
Way to let emotion ruin a rational argument. You do realize that the 2nd Amendment was established by men who knew that a government, unchecked, would naturally turn into tyranny by those intoxicated with power. They set up checks and balances in all of the branches of government like a big rock-paper-scissors game. Think of the 2nd as the fail-safe switch to the checks and balances.
I really hope they do; there's very good reason why mental health professionals have so many protections and obligations regarding patient privacy. If there is one place in the world where the government really shouldn't get involved, it's the therapist's office. Besides, most psychiatrists are already either required or encouraged to report to the appropriate officials when they believe a life is in danger, either the patient's or others. The only thing this law accomplishes is to repeat that in the specific context of guns, and draw attention to it in what is sure to be a long and detailed coverage by the media.
weinersmith
Adam broke into the safe while she was traveling. Then shot her with a .22 rifle when she returned, and finished his plans (a couple of days with her dead on the bed).
Safes keep children and lawyers from guns. There isn't a safe that will withstand a smart and determined attacker with time to get it open.
I'm struggling to think of many potentially dangerous tools that would compare to a gun in its portability and deadliness.
The weapons you are describing are military derivative firearms and by all rights, SHOULD be banned IMO.
Why? Many guns, including traditional-looking hunting guns, are derivatives of military design. Why does that matter in any way?
I understand saying "Full-auto machine guns are functionally different than semi-auto guns and thus pose a significant danger and should be restricted." -- in general, I agree with that statement. What I don't understand is why saying "Some semi-auto guns are somehow more dangerous than semi-auto guns and should be restricted" even though they are functionally identical and differ only in appearance.
Since AR-15s are used extremely rarely in crime (rifles if any sort, including AR-15s, are only used in about 3.7% of gun-related homicides according to FBI crime stats, and both the rate and absolute numbers have been doing down year-over-year for a long time), why should they be singled out?
Even with all the widely-publicized news stories about gun crime, America today has lower rates of gun-related homicide since 1964 and the downward trend is continuing.
Can things be done to help reduce violent crime even more? Absolutely. Will banning the most popular rifle in the country (which is rarely used in crime) have any meaningful effect on reducing violent crime? No.
It deeply disturbs me how freedom never enters into any of these arguments. For arguments sake, say I admit that allowing citizens to own guns will absolutely result in a significant rise if innocent deaths. As an aside: the same thing could be said of ownership of many other things.
Still why is freedom not even worth mentioning. Has it just become a buzzword, meaningless and not even understood? How did freedom ever become so meaningless and unwanted that it is not even included as a single point in arguments fundamentally about freedom?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
ok... now lets see... 2 years from now will the homicide rate be down? I think we know the answer to that... so what's the point?
My M1 has a bayonet mount, as that's just the standard mil-spec part of the gas tube.
It's not clear if "detachable magazine with a capacity greater than 7 rounds" also includes "detachable en-bloc clips with a capacity greater than 7 rounds". It's rather unlikely that the lawmakers gave the bill much thought from a technical perspective.
Next they'll be calling those hunting rifles "Sniper Rifles." Disarmament advocates are never satisfied.
So you will support having all military and law enforcement in this country operating under the same restrictions for gun possession as US citizens do, as there is clearly no need for the more dangerous and evil military grade weapons? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/require-law-enforcement-and-military-adhere-same-gun-laws-and-restrictions-placed-us-citizens/xhGg99rL?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Did you even read my post? If anything, I'll switch to use a MORE powerful toy because of this law.
I'd say anyone who calls a weapon a "toy" is completely unfit to own one.
Yea, becuase unregulated guns are working out so well in the Middle East!
Actually, they are. They have allowed citizens to put tyrannical governments on the defensive long enough to form the basis for an alternative government and attract the international assistance required to disable the dictators' military.
No one makes 7 round magazines for most of these rifles. This is a back door ban on just about anything other than 1911s and revolvers.
An interesting phrase, "...military derivative firearms and by all rights, SHOULD be banned IMO."
In United States v. Miller the Supreme Court held that short-barreled shotguns could be banned because the military had no use for such a firearm. In Heller the Supreme Court held that guns in common use could not be banned. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country and the fact that it is a military derivative seems to make it even more protected (though I would argue that the modern AR-15 is not really a military derivative from a functional perspective). The AR-15 has a different hammer and trigger mechanism and the lower receiver is designed so that those components are not interchangeable with the fully-automatic military version.
The primary issue from a political perspective is that the two guns look alike and that's why we hear about banning "military style" weapons. If the AR-15 was truly a military weapon we would not need the "style" modifier in the drive to ban them.
More interesting to me, though, is the lack of recognition in a technical discussion forum that a market is likely to coalesce around efficiency. I would not expect a civilian firearm market that is seeking efficiency and ease of use would differ that markedly from a military firearm market that is seeking efficiency and ease of use especially considering that it is often the same manufacturer. The fact that the rifles share cosmetic features and the optics, magazines, slings and other accoutrements are interchangeable should surprise no one who expects efficiency in the market. Those shared features, though, in no way make the civilian AR-15 the same from a functional perspective as the military version.
What's more troubling is that law enforcement is exempt from the restrictions that are being passed. The reason for this is simple - the legislatures recognize that these firearms are effective tools when facing today's criminal threat. If I'm in a situation where I need to call the police because of a particularly nasty situation they would be bringing the same exact firearm that I am prohibited from owning. The police will show up after an indeterminate time to a situation where I am prohibited from using the same firearm they are bring. I've been trained with the firearm. The firearm is clearly found to be effective. Yet, I have to wait for someone else to show up in order to deploy the effective firearm.
The training part reminds me of the other reason this firearm platform has become the most popular - the firearm is operationally similar to the firearm with which military personnel have trained. When they leave the military and want to purchase a rifle they are more likely to gravitate to one which seems familiar to them.
I refuse to accept your claim that "we have failed at our responsibility to safely possess firearms." There are more firearms today than at any time in our history. There are more firearm owners. The tragedies that we have witnessed are not because of the existence of the firearm but to the reluctance we have toward forcing people into mental health treatment.
I refuse to give up my natural right to self-defense because defective humans exist.
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur
I used to go with friends and shoot at ranges for fun. I've grown up since then.
The spirit of the 2nd amendment is a well regulated militia to bear arms protect against a tyrannical power. i.e. the British coming back for another go at their ex-colony. If you want to see a well regulated militia visit Switzerland because you certainly won't see it in the United States or in the way that the intent and spirit of the 2nd amendment has been corrupted.
And it took a Constitutional Amendment to do away with slavery. It will take another if you want to do away with privately owned guns.
Good luck with that.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Wait for some people to be killed, then quickly pass a law to get rid of people's Constitutional rights that you wanted to get rid of even before the tragedy. Pay lip service to the tragedy but make sure the reach of the law is much broader since after all you're using the tragedy as an excuse.
Yet someone could still easily buy and use 4 or more holsters and walk into a school with revolvers and shoot 10, 20, or more people if they wanted to.
Gun ban activists have their strategy planned out, and are waiting for that to happen so they can limit individuals to one handgun and a certain ration of ammunition. This is why they refuse to put guards in schools (besides the unions wanting all the tax money). "Responsible gun owners" who agree to concessions to gradually disarm themselves are actually working for a gun ban.
Pretty sure they already did that.
We, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing our firearms, incompetent at assessing who should have a firearm, and generally promoting the glorification of firearms use via the media, games, and certain aspects of our culture.
So "we, as a nation" shouldn't have any sort of firearms, including in our military. Because that's where your argument is heading.
Same for those of us in the gun culture. We have failed at our responsibility to safely possess firearms. We do not deserve them now.
What failure? I don't see evidence for your argument.
Can you please tell me how much you will suffer? If we combine the total suffering from all the people in the state who will lose their guns, do you believe that it is greater than the suffering felt by any combination of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims?
It's worth noting here that the Sandy Hook victims suffered from being in a gun-free zone. Make more of the US "gun-free" just means more suffering of that sort.
I was unaware that any constitutional amendments had been passed allowing NY to do this.
Please, tell me more about this new 28th amendment.
Considering that most real "sniper rifles" are, in fact, civilian model hunting rifles (for a long time, the US Army used the Remington 700 bolt-action as its sniper rifle), that wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the hoplophobes....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes, statistics are HARD, so we should ban everything that bellyfeels doubleplusungood.
Actually it makes almost every 22 illegal. Most 22 revolvers have 8 or more shots. Most 22 lever actions have greater than 7 round capacity.
Basically, you can have a break open or 5 round mag.
ALL weapons are military derivatives you dolt. One of the purposes of the military is to inflict violence and cause disruption. Weapons are critical to that mission. Weapons are also critical for keeping the peace, which is why the 2nd amendment guarantees we can have them. It's not a privilege, it's a right.....unless you believe the bill of rights is a bill of privileges.
We already have laws in place to address the concerns you list. Accountability is higher with firearms than with almost any other product. Intentional acts are prosecuted. Accidental acts are prosecuted. As well as everything in between.
You aren't after safety and accountability because we already have that. You don't like the fact that people have guns at all
Why can't you be honest about what you really want?
That is absolutely not true. Just because the Fed can regulate something, doesn't mean the states can't. Look at alcohol. The Feds regulate alcohol, but also states have their own laws for alcohol. The NY law is actually a great example of how it's supposed to work. More laws should be passed at the state level instead of looking for the federal govt to pass sweeping changes that applies to everybody. This is what is killing our legal system. Maybe the people in NY really want those laws but the people in Georgia or Montana find them completely unreasonable. Well, if we leave it up to the states, then each state can do what it wants. We need to quit looking to the federal govt to pass laws like this.
Yes, and now we have meth and 10% of the black population in jail. Thanks Fedgov!
"We, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing our firearms, incompetent at assessing who should have a firearm, and generally promoting the glorification of firearms use via the media, games, and certain aspects of our culture."
Oh, thanks for the decision Your Highness. Glad to see you're so eager to infringe on the rights of some because others have been careless and irresponsible.
Say, think you can do something about smoking and car ownership? After all, tobacco and auto related deaths each year far outnumber firearm-related deaths....yet nobody is doing anything more about restricting ownership of those things.
Thanks. We little people really appreciate your lordship.
Hitler said about the same thing, under the same circumstances. I wonder if the same thing will happen?
You are a blight upon your state and your nation. The government is not your fucking mommy. Get. The. Fuck. Out.
Reloads are fast enough. If one of these psychos ever have real training you'll find that limiting them to a .22 long rifle won't change the body count. However, the perps continue to be people acting in a criminal capacity beforehand to obtain the guns, so I'm sure that more laws against legal responsible people will change the actions of sociopaths.
A pen...
More people have been killed by pens than anything else in this world. See Iraq, one executive signature and how many thousands are dead?
Of the firearms deaths in the report, over 17,000 involve suicide (16,599), accidental discharge (824), or "undetermined intent" (324) 3 . Logic dictates that these events would overwhelmingly involve the discharge of a single bullet (after all, the firing of a second shot would likely mean it wasn't "accidental" and anyone seriously attempting to commit suicide would, at the very least, incapacitate themselves after the first shot). So how does removing bayonet lugs, banning folding stocks, or limiting high capacity magazines going to help this segment of the problem?
.
.
- 299 additional shooting reported in the statistics are legal interventions. What we might call “good shoots” performed by law enforcement.
- Of the remaining 10,828 firearm homicides, only the tiniest fraction (roughly 1%) of these involves "assault weapons". This was also true prior to the AWB. Statistically, any "benefits" from the AWB would be immeasurably small. Put another way, there were roughly 100 “assault weapon” deaths in 1993 prior to the AWB, there were roughly the same number in the years following the AWB. These are not my findings; they are the finding of The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. You see, the AWB included a requirement that the Attorney General provide a report to Congress within 30 months evaluating the effects of the ban 4
So that would mean that the odds of you dying in a firearm related homicide is in actuality more in the neighborhood of 1 in 26000. And the odds of you dying by the hand of an “assault weapon” wielding maniac would be on the order of 1 in 2.6 million, in any given year. The odds of such a thing happening over the entire course of your life would be around 1 in 34,000. By way of comparison, your lifetime odds of dying as an occupant in a car during a traffic accident is 1 in 247, 136 times greater than being killed by an “assault weapon”. Indeed, your odds of dying by a force of nature, such as lightning of flood, are over 11 times greater 5
2004 Official Journal of South Carolina
Meanwhile, we sink further into debt as a country due to the inaction of our elected officials with the debt per citizen over $50,000 without including any future obligations. But we are certainly safe from being killed by an mean gun now!
EVERY GUN is a military derivative firearm you Texas queer...
- Most hunting rifles are based off of Mausers, and Springfields, and other older military designs.
- The Winchester Repeating Arms were were developed for the military
- The flintlock, another military derivative rifle.
And in the future, when laser guns are viable. They'll be military derivatives.
I think you're well aware that's a completely different argument and, frankly, one that trivializes the issue we're talking about.
If I'm going to do that, I'll build and atom bomb and go out in a historical fashion... :-P
So what? Most guns on the market are military derivative in some way. Many bolt-action rifles owe their design to the Mauser. Most semi-auto pistols 9mm and above are operating on an action developed for the M1911 or Browing HiPower.
>We, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing our firearms, incompetent at assessing who should have a firearm
Many of us have shown ourselves to be incapable of intelligent and responsible speech, yet here we are supporting the 1st Amendment for the people spewing lies about weapons to try to get them banned, and even for the Westboro Baptists. This is not kindergarten. You don't punish the class for the wrongdoings of the few.
Maybe you don't. Enjoy your non-ownership, but leave the rest of us alone.
How about we put bad guys in jail, instead of punishing the millions of gun owners who haven't done anything wrong? A dramatic, double digit drop in murder rates for "Project Exile", vs. "challenges in discerning the effects of the ban"? Richmond, Virginia, had a program in the 1990s. "Project Exile". Short version: Mandatory additional 5 years in jail if you use a gun in a crime, or if you're a felon found possessing a gun or ammunition. Crime went down 40%.
https://house.resource.org/106/org.c-span.153371-1.pdf
From page 2 of this report, "Since the project began, the results have been evident. More than 200 armed criminals were removed from Richmond streets during the first year of Project Exile alone. An entire gang responsible for multiple murders has been dismantled. In 1998, murders were 33 percent below 1997, the lowest number since 1987. In 1999, murders are down yet another 29 percent."
Compare this with the Assault Weapons Ban, which accomplished nothing. Here's the National Institute of Justice's report, describing how it had no effect in reducing crime:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_brief1999.pdf
"A number of factors—including the fact that the banned weapons and magazines were rarely used to commit murders in this country, the limited availability of data on the weapons, other components of the Crime Control Act of 1994, and State and local initiatives implemented at the same time—posed challenges in discerning the effects of the ban."
Virtually all bolt-action rifles (the overwhelming majority of hunting rifles around the world) are based on the Mauser bolt-action. Which was originally developed as a military weapon (and was used as such by pretty much every country in the world, including the USA, as the standard for service rifles from the 1890's to post-ww2 [note an exception for the British Empire, which used the Lee-Enfield and variants, which were not Mauser-based designs, but were better in some ways]).
Most of the remaining hunting rifles are either semi-automatic (and thus "EVIL!!" to the gun-banners), or single-shot. Virtually all single-shot rifles are based on a handful of designs, all of which were originally developed as military weapons (note the Ruger Number One as an example - it uses essentially the same action as the Sharps Rifle, a Civil War era military firearm).
By the definition of "military derivative firearms and by all rights, SHOULD be banned", you basically cover EVERY firearm ever made...
Which, I assume, was your point - there are people who won't be happy until there are no guns outside government control anywhere.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Waking up by pounding gestapo at your door and watching you and your neighbor hauled off and killed.
(Oh yes, this isn't even Godwin's law. This is Russia, this is Cambodia, this is Rwanda, Los Angeles....many other places.)
What EXACTLY makes you think that such crimes aren't being reported? Sounds an awful lot like you are just making up excuses on the spot.
Also funny how you are blaming the gun owners for Federal government malfeasance and gun seller irresponsibility. What does concealed carry have to do with gun sales? That's like claiming that low accident rates on a highway with no speed limit don't matter because the evil car sellers will sell cars to anyone even if they don't have a driver's license. It just doesn't make any sense.
If they are selling guns so freely to criminals, WHY AREN'T THEIR CRIME RATES HIGHER?
You seriously think this? Between 1980 and 1988, blunt instruments were responsible for about 6% of murders. Guns were responsible for about 60%.
I guess being responsible in your opinion means one must intuit whenever anyone could possibly commit a crime against you or your property.
Government conspiracy or not it is being used to take guns away. Period.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
A clip is not a magazine. The magazine is internal. Internal magazines are mentioned elsewhere in the bill.
Do you Gentoo!?
You're talking about that kid who was a drug dealer, broke into houses and stole jewelry, got into multiple fights, right?
That Martin kid?
And actually every M14 except for the National Match is capable of full auto fire. Some of the issued rifles did not have the selector switch installed, and that is the only thing that limited it to semi-auto operation.
When i look at my own country's history, it doesn't seem reasonable to me at all!
Look at german history back in the 30s... Are you suprised to find some (lots of) parallels to what's happening right now in the US?
For now it's just the 2nd amandment that is gradually taken from you. Which will be next? The 1st?
The scary thing is you seem not to notice what's going on. They make you think it is all for the 'Greater Good' (which awefully lot of people seem to just believe).
I am really amazed how easily you let go of your 2nd amendment.
How about instead of having a database of lawful gun owners, we have a Free, Open and Searchable database of all people with mentally unstable, or have violent tendancies. It makes much more sense.
That was semi sarcastic, in that nobody is suggesting that anyone that has had a mental breakdown or violent episode be put in a national database. However I want to know why. All you liberal pantywaists can list your reason why THIS is not a good idea, but feel okay to register people who have no issues while not being hypocritical.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
How about the millions of children killed in nations where the citizens did NOT have arms to protect themselves.
Oh, and let's consider the fact that Newtown was not the worst massacre of children as reported by the media. The ATF/FBI killed more children in Waco, Texas. Just a tid bit for ya...
It becomes my business when the redneck owning an assault rifle increases the likelihood of me being shot. A free society is still a society, and needs to resolve conflicts of interests - in this case the right of the redneck to own a gun against other people's right to not be murdered.
So yes, you do need to justify why a conflict of interest should be resolved in your favour, even in a free society. And the anti-gun people need to justify their position. Then we'll see who has the strongest point.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Saw this somewhere else and liked it. Some people say that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Even more scary is that when guns are outlawed, only government will have guns.
Here goes:
I don't carry a gun to kill people.
I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don't carry a gun to scare people.
I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.
I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid.
I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I'm evil.
I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the
world.
I don't carry a gun because I hate the government.
I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don't carry a gun because I'm angry.
I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating
myself for failing to be prepared.
I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.
I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not
on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.
I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy.
I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a
cowboy.
I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man.
I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the
ones they love.
I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate.
I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am
inadequate...
I don't carry a gun because I love it.
I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful
to me.
Police protection is an oxymoron.
Free citizens must protect themselves.
Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the
crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.
Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to
take an "ass" whoopin'....
His guns were legal in the state of his previous duty station and in the state of his new duty station but were not in the state he was driving through.
If the guns were illegal in the state he was in, what's the problem with them being confiscated?
I live in Canada. When I flew from Canada to the Caribbean with a stop in the USA, I had to go through customs in the USA *even though I never left the secure area of the airport*!
A big problem with gun control is that the government is once again trying to protect us from ourselves. If you make guns harder to get, they will be harder to get for honest people who need to protect themselves. Criminals aren't bothered by breaking the law now, and passing new gun laws won't bother them a bit. In fact, making more laws that are difficult if not impossible to enforce just weakens the enforcement of the laws we already have.
One down 49 to go!
I am more afraid of my fellow citizens driving than I am of them shooting me. Too many idiots txting, watching YouTube (yes I've seen it) on their phones while driving. Why don't we ban cars?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It is very likely to be tossed out as over-broad in the Federal courts as a result. The key factor is how common the weapons are - and banning the majority of the guns in current use will certainly not fly.
And actually every M14 except for the National Match is capable of full auto fire. Some of the issued rifles did not have the selector switch installed, and that is the only thing that limited it to semi-auto operation.
Well, technically all semi-automatics are *capable* of fully automatic operation (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) with appropriate mods. Hell, I've even seen old plans in a Guns and Ammo magazine of somebody's idea in the late 1800's to make a lever-action rifle into either a semi-auto or automatic rifle. Looked unwieldy as hell, but still.
Having said that, I didn't realize that M-14's were initially designed to be selective fire between semi-auto and full auto. You learn something new every day. :-)
Not even just borderline. See this:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3085/do-antidepressants-only-work-because-of-the-placebo-effect
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Sorry if you didn't really get the point of my post...
I was just trying to point out the ridiculousness of the proposition that New York's recent legislation is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. Now, I wholly admit that their reaction is almost certainly stronger due to the recent events, but I'm trying to make the point that the legislation is not simply a reaction to a single, recent event, but rather a long overdue reaction to a string of literally dozens of mass shootings over the past decade. We can argue over what kind of action should be taken, but the one thing that should be blatantly obvious to anyone is that action of some sort is not only necessary, but should have been enacted long ago.
And no, it's not a brainless "think of the children!" There are far more gun deaths than those reported in the numerous school shootings. And yet, just because the argument is a bit cliche doesn't mean we should not think of the children. It's been nearly 14 years since Columbine, and what steps have been taken to help prevent such mass shootings, children or otherwise?
As for your "don't bother coming back" quip, I think I'll just disregard that. I don't often post on Slashdot--only if I feel truly compelled or that I have something worth saying--and my comments are generally well-received. I'd be curious to see how your own posts are received, but as an Anonymous Coward, that's not possible. I would suspect that you post as an AC for a reason, though.
MOD UP!!!
Sorry son, you first.
Ohh, I don't know.. maybe because in New York I couldn't have my Springfield XDM? Looks like even though she tagged this guy with five rounds of .38 out of a revolver that she'd have been toast had there been accomplices. You might bleat 'anecdote', I will say 'do your own research; home invasions are getting nastier and are a trend'.
.22 LR) and we're 'casual' handgunners.
;)
The protection of yourself and your family is your responsibility. Nobody else's.
The cops are not your friend. They are not there to protect you; they are there to clean up the mess. And yes, I'll use the cliche: the police are there in minutes when seconds count. In addition, I don't understand law enforcement needs full-auto variants of the AR-15 since many cops can't shoot worth a shit anyway, let alone handle full auto (which is largely used for suppressive fire in war). We used to out-shoot them all the time when I was in the military, and I laugh at them now at our local range. A couple of departments mandate a couple of hundred rounds a practice per year; the average in my crew is about 1000-2000 a month, minimum (some of these guys who have money are running through 6k a month).. of 'real' calibers (not counting
As for shotguns (because you just know somebody's going to go there..).. let me see you clear corners with a shotgun like I can my semi-auto pistol. Just let me see a shotgun muzzle coming around a corner.. and if you do the 'come around then bring it up' trick you're already in my tritium 3-dot sights. Mozambique Drill in effect.
Bottom line is: whatever the average flatfoot has access to as a duty weapon, I should have access to. The criminals have access to EVERYTHING. My weapons are secure, but if you manage to break into my house while I'm not there and use a plasma cutter to open my gun safe, then the problem is you, not me.
Please note: I'm all for background checks, closing the gunshow loophole, and deveoping a mechanism that keeps the crazies away from firepower, as well as enchancing penalties for people who do not keep their weapons secured.
I don't know where you live in Texas, but wherever it is (unless it's Austin) just stay in the closet about your views on weaponry. It will save you serious emotional distress. I've lived in Texas and Arizona, and we'd have openly mocked you. Maybe even made fun of you.
You mean in Iraq, where they were banned under Saddam and remain banned, or Afghanistan, where they are being used to fight off foreign invaders?
It's doubtful any of this will change anything in cases like this. It will require constitutional amendment + about 200 years for existing guns to disappear through attrition.
Since we're wishing, I'd like a 17-way with JLH, JLaw, LiLo, TayTay, Anne Hathaway, Vanessa Bayer from SNL for some reason, both elf chicks from LotR, ...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Seven round mags are simply not available,
Huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911_pistol
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I guess you have never read anything at all written by Thomas Jefferson.
"The tree of liberty from time to time must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." This was said in response to an uprising against HIS government.
Yes, he fully supported the rights of the people to take up arms against their government, as did many others. That is what makes a patriot. The opposite is a traitor.
Banning so called assault rifles will cause those who intend mass mayhem to switch to a far more devastating close range weapon - the 12 gauge pump shotgun. I'd much rather face someone with an AR and a 20 round magazine than someone with 8 rounds of 00 buck in a shotgun. And, lawmakers don't dare tray and ban them - they are way too popular for hunting, and it would ruin their strategy of trying to pit the outdoor sportsman type gun owners against the ugly black military style weapon owners.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Actually, S&W probably sells 5x more semi-automatics these days then they do revolvers.
I don't have a television, and those stores defended by gun owners were spared from the rioters, while those that weren't were burned.
It's also important to remember that the US Government has never made surplus M14's available to civilians. If someone has a Government issue M14 they stand the risk of going to prison, as was stolen at some point. Some of the other M-whatever manufacturers have stamped their rifles with an M14 mark, but they are not true M14's.
All right, let's run with this one...
The siege near Waco left a death toll of 74 Branch Davidians, of whom 21 were minors, who were accidental casualties.
The massacre at Newtown left 26 dead, of whom 20 were minors, who were intentional targets.
So yes, technically speaking, more minors were killed at Waco. But if you try to compare the two scenarios in any sort of objective light, you will see there is absolutely no comparison at all. That's no excuse at all for the deaths of children in Waco, which was also a tragedy, but there is a world of difference between accidental casualties and intentionally slaughtering children.
And to touch on your point about children killed where they cannot be protected by firearms, that's a red herring argument at best. Just look at your own example of Waco, for instance. The children who died there not only were not protected by their parents having weapons, they were directly put in harms way by the acts of their gun-hoarding parents. Also, as you may recall, part of the reason why the FBI even stormed the compound was because (at least it is claimed) that they were afraid that the group would commit mass suicide, and that those children were being mistreated.
In a free society, I shouldn't have to justify what I want to do to you or why I want to own something to anybody. It's none of your business.
Well, this in principle is wrong. To use hyperbole, there will never be a large, functional society that allows you to posses weapons-grade uranium without justifying it. This is because the risk to society is too great. Any time possession of something causes a significant risk to society, then yes, it becomes all of our business. Generally items should be banned when their danger to society outweighs both their usefulness to individuals, and the rights of individuals to "have stuff" without being bothered about it.
Problems occur when things cause a perceived risk to society, and where the perception is not universal. Lots of controversial issues are not an issue in principle, only an issue of degree.
America is different than Canada. It's warm here...so we actually go out of our houses and spend time out on the streets.
We also have a defective judicial system that keeps putting violent criminals back on those streets (this is the #1 cause of violent crime in America btw)
Did you even read my post? If anything, I'll switch to use a MORE powerful toy because of this law.
I'd say anyone who calls a weapon a "toy" is completely unfit to own one.
It's still better than calling it "my precious".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
If he was that smart and determined, then I doubt a law would have stopped him any better than a safe did.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Then repeal it. Go ahead and try.
Did you live in LA during the riots?
If not, please close your mouth and stop believing what you think you see on TV.
I did, and you know what? Police ain't coming. Fire department ain't coming. Nobody coming to help.
I had to decide whether to leave my apartment by trying to drive off in a car with no gas, or staying and hoping the presence of three cowering people with a baseball bat would keep anyone out. Stayed, other properties got robbed, we got avoided. Never again for that cowering shit.
I'm sure in your mind, i'd have gone on a killing spree if I had a weapon. Which is wrong, but you'll never believe that.
Gun crime has been going down already and some of the places with the worst crime have the strictest laws. To be honest they need to tackle mental illness before restricting guns but that would require good healthcare programs and better checks on people with no immediate results for the people who hate guns or fear everything.
I'm sure it will accomplish exactly what they think it will.
This is "stuff that matters".
No it isn't.
It's American gun wanking.
(Two countries in the world are obsessed with guns - the US and the UK. The rest of us find the subject alternately funny and boring).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"New York's law also aims to keep guns out of the hands of those will mental illness"
yes, all those crazy people ready to shoot, hiding under every rock.
This is nothing more than an invitation to a witch hunt brought on by the ignorant.
If you read the DSM, everyone has something that could possibly be conceived as mentally ill, only some are prosecuted for a small unrelated portion who commit crimes. The interpretations are often politicial.
Don't agree with your boss, parents, school administrators politics, your crazy.
Don't buy into the latest trend from big media? Crazy!
Non-conformist? Crazy!
Outsider? Crazy!
So all those liberal anti-gun "mental health professionals" can report any patient who admitted to owning guns as being potentially dangerous and have their guns stolen in the name of OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Does this include social workers with a basic degree and run group therapy sessions in the library community room? Is there some definition of mental health professional?
Someone, anyone taking my possession without my permission is stealing. Period. Just because they think they're empowered by law to take it doesn't mean I can't get fair value if they're not going to give it back. This isn't eminent domain. It's legalized theft. Didn't a bunch of people in some colony in the same general area start a war to prevent this kind of egregious behaviour? This would be a job for a well organized militia.
Oh wait...
... that would neither have prevented nor (further) criminalized the scenario it was drawn up in response to.
On the plus side, we're not "fighting the last war". On the down side, we're not "fighting the next war" either.
As of 20 hours ago, cbs says 'It's still unclear what motivated the attack." Very hard to counter motivations like his, without knowing what his were.
And sadly, we have people spending time studying Adam Lanza's DNA, hoping for "extreme violence" tendency clues. Much like hoping to find whether a CPU has "goto tendencies". Or like tearing apart Einstein's brain, looking for where the genius node is.
1) Smaller clips? Bring more guns. Adam already did.
2) Background checks? Nobody has said Adam would have failed.
3) Tougher penalties? Adam committed suicide. Who you going to penalize?
4) Programs to cut gun violence? That's nice, if you can predict why or where. That isn't the case here.
5) "Well, we have to do SOMETHING!" - maybe for political reasons, yes. But as Slashdot says about the TSA, security theater doesn't make you safer.
Stop talking sense, its wasted on the NRA/Religious (probably the same group) supporters. Anyone who can think, would agree with you that changing the constitution would be possible. Unfortunately too many see cowboys films as real life now.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
How about instead of having a database of lawful gun owners, we have a Free, Open and Searchable database of all people with mentally unstable, or have violent tendancies. It makes much more sense.
That was semi sarcastic, in that nobody is suggesting that anyone that has had a mental breakdown or violent episode be put in a national database.
Actually, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA did suggest we keep a National Database of the Mentally Ill. (see page 3 of the transcript at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/21/us/nra-news-conference-transcript.html). Here are two (admittedly oversimplified) reasons to why we should have a Gun Owners' database vs. a Mentally Ill Database.
1. Gun owners WANT to own a gun, and (theoretically) take on the rights and responsibilities of ownership.
2. People who have a mentally illness DON'T WANT IT. They have enough problems receiving help and dealing with the stigma as it is.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
go back to the drawing board, that was a very childish response to compare free speech with a killing machine
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"I live in Mesa Arizona in a state that allows concealed carry without a license, Mesa remains below the national average in all violent crimes for cities of more than 500,000 people" - useless anecdotal statistic unless you mention how many actually carry their dick in a holster "Maybe if Cuomo and Bloomberg would work on figuring out why people in his state want to kill each other"
thats easy, too many idiots think it "big" to carry a gun and its an easy response to a situation.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
there is a blurb in there about them. Now they can get back to ignoring the mentally ill.
It's a matter of imagination, not subversion. Nanny state dependents with no imagination can't understand that there are other ways to engage in mayhem.
Yeah, but penis extension worshipers just don't get the kick from propane.
How this stupidity is moderated as informative I can't imagine. I suppose all the female gun owners have penis envy too? The weak people who defend themselves with guns just wish they had bigger dicks?
Grow up.
I should grow up?
You do know that Bushmaster were advertising the AR15 with the slogan "consider your man card reissued"?
I'm just assuming they know their market.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Out here in the real world, when such discretion is given to a single individual, they will abuse that discretion, sell it, or neglect it.
To even broach the subject seriously shows an utter naivety about the wholesomeness and integrity of people put in such positions of discretionary power.
We (Americans) would like to live in a nation of laws, not a nation ruled by thousands of tiny little dictators in their own little regulatory fiefdoms.
Each legislative issuance of this sort of discretionary power is a retraction of freedom, no matter what the subject- whether it be guns, or zoning laws, or health care.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Where's your rant on Victoria Secret commercials? Or Axe body wash?
I should grow up?
You do know that Bushmaster were advertising the AR15 with the slogan "consider your man card reissued"?
I'm just assuming they know their market.
Yes, there have never been any other company that has had childish, offensive, sexist, racist, or otherwise insensitive advertising.
I can't wait until I see a racist advertisement so I can don a KKK cloak and go to town. You know, because they did it too.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Where's your rant on Victoria Secret commercials? Or Axe body wash?
Eeew. Victorias Secret is crap. Personaly I only buy Aubade.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Ever been to mexico? Don't suppose you've read their Constitution either. You know, where they have their version of the 2nd amendment (it's their 10th, iirc). They have the right to keep arms. andALSO the right to bear them in pubic under police regulation. Likewise in Guatamala and Columbia. In fact, most countries with a right to bear arms have a high homicide rate.
Allow me to illustrate for you who your REAL enemy is in terms of gun control. It's not the politicians. Contrary to popular /. opinion, our politicians are not stupid. It has, I guarantee you, occurred to at least some of our elected representatives that a ban on assault rifles is stupid and doesn't solve the problem. It has also occurred to many of them that the problem really is mentally ill people. However, there are two constituencies that are driving them to gun control measures. The first constituency happens to be socially & fiscally conservative pro-gun owners who insist on better policing of existing firearm regulations (good), and also reduce taxation for everyone in general, thus cutting down government waste and programs. This is admirable, except that mental health programs, asylums, and facilities in general that would benefit society by taking the mentally ill out of mainstream society and rehabilitating them are among the first local/county/state/federal funding expenditures to get cut because there's not enough of a constituency to represent them.
The second constituency, and the one with FAR more electoral power than the NRA, are suburban women voters. If you want to know WHO exactly is driving the push for gun control and pushing Rahm Emmanuel and all the other politicians in the country to do something about guns, it is this group. These are the voters who are working mothers, who have never grown up in a house with guns. Their children go to suburban schools very similar to Columbine and Sandy Hook. They've never been victims of violent crime. They've never had cause to fear a tyrannical government. But they DO know gun nuts. They all know at least one person who talks about government conspiracies, who brings up Obama at holiday dinners and how he's taking the county to damnation and socialism, who whispers darkly of the coming apocalypse over beers with their husbands on the back porch, and who owns a goddamn arsenal of scary-looking assault weapons. To these women, and their families, the Enemy is not urban black thugs. Nor is it black-clad government agents. The Enemy is the crazy gun nut down the street who doesn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, is paranoid and suspicious of everyone, has a whole lot of guns, and is constantly ranting about the government.
If you want to know the real reason why your gun rights are being taken away, go look in the mirror. You, and others like you, scare the hell out of these people who have no reason to fear the entities you fear. They fear YOU, and they are asking our government to do something about YOU. And they outnumber the NRA, they outnumber the responsible gun owners, and their voices will be heard. It is not a question of if gun control and an assault weapon ban is going to be enacted, but when. And bear this in mind: the day that women take to the streets and march in favor of gun control, is the day the Second Amendment will fall. Why? Because your Enemy won't be the black-clad federal troops coming to take away your guns, it's going to be the scared mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters who are marching in the streets demanding political action because they don't feel safe around YOU. And let me ask you this: when it comes to that, are you willing to kill those women to keep your guns? Because THEY are the ones who the federal troops will obey. And THEY outnumber YOU.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Check your sources. Many robberies and violent crimes were stopped by armed citizens during the LA riots.
Violence perpetrated by armed rioters, and indeed any criminal in a major US city, is committed with illegal handguns. It shouldn't surprise anyone that those people don't give a shit about gun laws. You're more than welcome to go look all this up.
Gun bans are a joke. You trade freedom for security, and get neither.
IANAL but No, the M1 Garand or any other gun from WW2 or even WW1 is not considered a "relic" or "antique" firearm in the United States. The M1 Garand was not made before 1899, is not a replica of a gun from before 1899, is not muzzle loading and is capable of firing "modern" (rim/center fire) ammunition. The law regarding antique firearms is to allow people to own and collect them without needing to register. Of course the finer details varies from state to state but here's us code
18 USC 921 (a)(16). (A) any firearm (including any firearm with a matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system) manufactured in or before 1898; and (B) any replica of any firearm described in subparagraph (A) if such replica -- (i) is not designed or redesigned for using rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition, or (ii) uses rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition which is no longer manufactured in the United States and which is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade.
[FUCK BETA 2.6.2014]
> We have a messed up society.
What the US has is a constitutionally protected gun business.
There are more than 20 US manufacturers of guns. This business is worth about $30 billion a year (
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/0103/A-look-at-America-s-gun-industry).
The US market for guns is more than 300 million people. Gun ownership in Canada and the UK, to cite figures from nations that have gun-control laws, is at about 30%. Gun ownership in the US is at about 80%.
So, the probability of a gun in the US being in the hands of a crazy person is very high.
The probability of a gun in the US being in the hands of a person who will *go crazy* at some point is also high.
The guns won't go away -- there are too many of them now, and a profitable, constitutionally protected gun business with a huge market will do whatever it must to keep producing and selling.
The only practical options for gun ownership are
constraints on types of weapons and quantity of ammunition for citizens, and
annual psychological testing of gun owners.
In short, political suicide.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Excerpt:
Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated
everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could
have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if
you think about it for more than a minute.
University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in
depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns
out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded
Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its
defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out
in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law
that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the
government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the
Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict
registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to
own guns, sell them or carry them.
The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically
does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely
deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well
as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people,
including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations
altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and
permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.
--- end excerpt ---
Later, the author goes on to say,
Excerpt:
Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich,
notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back.
“Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and
fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7
million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and
artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?” he
told Salon.
--- end excerpt ---
Or, as an old net-friend of mine said once, "you're arguing that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was unnecessary, since it was obvious that the Wehrmacht would fall to the mighty French Resistance forces".
And saying that you need your guns to protect you from the govenment means a) you don't believe in democracy; b) hate America, and c) are traitors or fellow-travelers.
mark "take that and smoke it"
Is a bow and arrow a toy? How about an BB gun? How about a set of darts? How about an airsoft gun? How about a nerf gun?
Just because your mommy wouldn't let you have the sharp scissors until you were 18 doesn't mean that the rest of us can't entertain ourselves with adult things responsibly. Target shooting is a fine pastime.
PS - work on your vocabulary, words sometimes have multiple connotations.
toy ... ...
noun
2. a thing or matter of little or no value or importance; a trifle.
3. something that serves for or as if for diversion, rather than for serious practical use.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Same thing with laws -- they just keep the honest people honest.
You can't legislate away crazy people.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Should be 'New York Passes Useless Gun Control Law', since nothing in the law will make any positive difference in crime rates, and will only impact legal gun holders. My prediction is that like Chicago, New York will continue down the path of passing more and more restrictive gun control laws, which make it easier for criminals to commit more crimes and serve only to continue to drive their violent crime rates even higher above the national average. Meanwhile, I live in a community of over 600,000 people in a state with very few gun control laws (Arizona) that has a violent crime rate almost have the national average. Where I can open carry into a bank (and have) and no one runs out in fear, the tellers smile, say high, and take my deposit as if nothing was wrong.
Because nothing was wrong.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
You're right. I'm not sure where I got the idea that guns of 50 years of age had special treatment.
Do you Gentoo!?
Whenever gun control comes up my Father always tells us about kids in his shop class in the 60's making zip guns. And even if the government managed to lock down commercial ammunition it's not like the manufacture of black powder is a secret.
This is "stuff that matters".
You're right. For a lot of people it doesn't matter. As long as they are able to watch Hollywood Housewives, use smartphones they can't afford, drive disposable vehicles, and drink energy drinks by the gallon, they could care less about this country being run into the ground. And the four years haven't even started yet. We've officially hit rock bottom and have started to dig.
DC vs. Heller
Sorry to tell you this, but it's not getting smacked down. Mentally ill people and felons have no second amendment rights.
:(){
Seems to me that the NRA's idea of armed guards *everywhere* is less than one step from fascism, not freedom.
mark "don't have a gun; don't need one; not a coward"
Aviation policy is written in blood. Gun policy is written in tears. The result? We have safe skies, and dangerous streets.
It's an interesting coincidence that we have an aviation problem ongoing now too. I bet the Boeing problem will be examined not only from a technology standpoint (ban this battery) but from a social standpoint (how did this battery get past QC?). That's the blood, both literal and figurative of the airline business.
The gun problem will be addressed with an insanity that rivals that of the crazed shooters themselves. Obama refuses to address the elephant in the room--how to enact a saner policy that preserves the 2nd Amendmant rights. Perhaps that would mean a Swiss-style policy, where you must join an organization that periodically checks your fitness for ownership of certain weapons. It might even pass muster without modifying the Constitution. Instead we'll ignore that issue and it'll end up being a SCOTUS mess and/or mass civil disobediance, or selective enforcement, or just another way to tack more years onto criminal sentences. Nothing will really be fixed, because it'll all be done on pure emotion and the documents that are supposed to govern us are being ignored. It'll be done like this because people are bawling their eyes out and politicians feel like they have to do something. Those are the tears, both literal and figurative of guns in America.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Jesus Christ mozmurder, you are a G-man through and through. Not everyone thinks the right solution is an all out civil war. But there are allot of sane rational people who have tried their damnedest to play by the rules, affect change, and simply KNOW BETTER THEN YOUR CLOSE MINDED BIGOTRY towards everything that doesn't fit the perfect pyramid of rich to poor, power to powerlessness.
STFU.
But it Does Not Happen. There are no stories from the UK or France or Germany or Sweden of crazed killers who've cooked up some clever death dealing machine in their kitchen and then wreaked mayhem on the streets, are there? Mass killings in these countries are dramatically rarer than in the US, and still involve guns for the most part.
I'm not a Catholic, but they have an interesting policy in place regarding the selection of saints.
The first step is they must have already been dead 5 years. That way their initial popularity has waned somewhat and there is less pressure to hurry them through the process.
It would be interesting if similar restraints acted on the legal process, to avoid kneejerk emotional legislation that doesn't solve the problem but often makes it worse.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Sensible changes to how one legally acquires a gun and increased penalties for violence. Nobody's TERKIN YER GERNS. See how easy that is?
Great idea. Look up "US gun massacres". Now research what happened to the perpetrators over the last 60 years: in 94% of cases, they either killed themselves, or were killed by law enforcement.
What penalty increase over "dead" are you suggesting here? I'm pretty sure this was abolished in 1823 in England, but it used to be that suicides and criminals killed in the commission of a crime could have their bodies impaled postmortem and placed by the side of the highway; perhaps we should bring the practice back?
What actually needs to happen is increased mental health support, including bringing back involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment, both of which went out the window under Reagan as cost-cutting measures, echoing nationally what he had done as governor of California. Now, you can't force mentally ill people to maintain medication, and to be monitored on compliance with treatment, since that would be a violation of their rights.
Personally, I think that an ROR (Release on Own Recognizance) for potentially violent mental illnesses simply shouldn't happen without a mandator implant of a drug pump to keep them sane. It's you're right to refuse the implant, but it's societies right to keep you locked up so that you are guaranteed your medication, should you refuse that treatment alternative.
It's a matter of imagination, not subversion. Nanny state dependents with no imagination can't understand that there are other ways to engage in mayhem.
Yeah, but penis extension worshipers just don't get the kick from propane.
How this stupidity is moderated as informative I can't imagine. I suppose all the female gun owners have penis envy too? The weak people who defend themselves with guns just wish they had bigger dicks?
Grow up.
I should grow up?
You do know that Bushmaster were advertising the AR15 with the slogan "consider your man card reissued"?
I'm just assuming they know their market.
Yes, and I'm also familiar with the concept of marketing. Your statement on the other hand was not marketing or anything like it but was intended to belittle and propagate stereotypes. So yes. Grow up.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
If the firearm is designed to kill people, ban them with the exception of police and military forces. So pistols and automatic weapons.
Firearms used for hunting, so rifles, and shotguns, are fine. Limit clip/mag size to 5. Unless you are laying waste to a herd of deer illegally, or are the worst shot alive (by which time the game will have fled anyway) you don't need more.
As far as defending against home intruders and government: A) A shotgun in close quarters is probably easier to use for the relitevly untrained, and is way more scary to boot. Hell 50 Cent survived getting shot like 7 times with a 9mm, guess how many home invaders would survive a blast or two if a 12 guage at close range, i'm guessing zero (not that I'm calling 50 cent a home invader, its just an example, relax). B) How much of a fight to you really think the few of you that actually own an assult rifle or whatever VS what is a modern US army for example. How much of a difference do you think it would make to only be limited to a 5 shot rifle? Hint: The answer to both is "not much".
Seems like a pretty common sense simple thing to do, but hey whatever. Don't sell weapons designed *specifically* to kill people to the general public and then get all surprised when *GASP*, they are used to kill people...
Does anyone else think it hilarious that this brave gun control zealot posts as an anonymous coward while calling his opponents the same?
So many gun control advocates want to play this card when it is in fact themselves that are cowards. They quake in their boots and wet their pants at the mere mention of assault rifles. Anyone who has grown up with families that hunt have no irrational fear of firearms. The problem is that this is no rational debate. It is an irrational emotional fear which drives one segment of the electorate to seek to deprive the other of its rights. While I don't hunt, many of my family and friends do, and I shudder at the whining I've heard the past two weeks over guns.
I'm sorry for everyone thinking of the children and using them as an excuse to push an unconstitutional political agenda but mass school shootings aren't even a statistically significant cause of death. Somewhere in the ballpark of death by lightning strike. Your child's chances of being struck by lightning are much greater than getting killed in a mass shooting.
A car is a capable of far more damage than a gun, they kill a hell of a lot more people than guns, and outlawing cars wouldn't be a direct violation of the Constitution in the way these gun control laws are.
Stop trampling on people's rights and cut this gun control crap out. If anything we should be relaxing gun laws. Require schools to have a number of "safety officers" based on student population. Let them determine their own method of selecting teachers to occupy these roles there are generally no shortage of former military among gym teachers and administrators. These teachers should have special training and concealed weapons permits, concealed weapons, and a bump in pay. Maybe lock a few rifles up securely somewhere on the off chance something more is needed. Then give them radios and wire an alarm button to every teachers desk. Press the button and the safety officers all get an alert over the radio indicating the class.
Doesn't put guns into unqualified hands. Doesn't put a useless TSA style security checkpoint at the door. Doesn't involve openly armed authority figures roaming the halls desensitizing children to a police state. But does drastically reduce the damage a rogue child can do before being put down.
Additionally, weapon (including gun) safety and usage courses should be a mandatory part of the school curriculum with a certification given at the end. Hopefully this will reduce hysteria, accidental shootings, and maybe lead to a boost in private gun ownership thereby making our nation safer and reducing crime. Statistics all show that gun owners who have gotten this sort of training are safer and more responsible by far than the general population (and not just with guns).
Can't find an article on it, but I seem to remember a case where some terrorists suffered from "premature detonation" because their bomb was set to the wrong time-zone when they crossed into a neighbouring country/province (or they missed DST)
Every month we have another crazy man gun shooting. You can't possibly pass any gun laws without being called "reactionary" because there is always a recent event one can point to; advocates naturally will use recent events to promote their cause. Duh. The proposals have been around for decades and are NOT new; obviously they are not designed for this specific shooting. The good part of this event is that more people are talking about CRAZY PEOPLE than previously and I think that is the case because nothing previously discussed would have stopped the madman.
Reactionary would be putting cops in the schools... done in many places since the 90s... cameras, metal detectors, door bells, 1 open entrance, a more prison-like school system-- that has been done and that was reactionary because it did just about nothing beneficial... like the TSA theater. These old proposals WILL do something in general and are not completely without merit. There is no magic bullet to this problem ;-)
That being said, I'd ban ALL hand guns completely. I'm for FREE serious assault weapons with heavy regulation; I'm not keen on hunting rifles but i'd let them keep their so-called "sport." Hand guns are not serious arms and cause nothing but trouble... even the cops don't properly use theirs.
Finding the "crazy gene" is worth it only if someday in the future we have the political will to impose regulation on procreation or mandatory gene therapy. Otherwise you have people who will be cursed by their DNA when people find out they have the pedophile gene... etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What makes me think that? well, I'd guess the attitueds to other crimes in the county, like sexual assaults. Merely threatening with a gun isn't much of a crime by comparison, especially if it's by a white guy (potential posse member!) on a non-white guy (show your papers!), well, unless you're someone investigating or running against Joe. Then you can be a white guy and threatened and no-one will do anything either.
Is that really true though? Internal Magazines aren't banned, you're just not allowed to load more than 7 rounds. I can take an 1897 Winchester Shotgun and put only 7 rounds into the internal magazine and it will work perfectly fine. An M1 Garand doesn't load like that. You need to get a full en-bloc clip (8 rounds) and press that into the magazine. If you only put 7 rounds into the clip the gun doesn't load properly.
Do you Gentoo!?
Your statement would lead one to believe that it was the wild west out here, when it isnt.
Which is a pity. Because the wild west would be far better than what we have now (radio, television, and movie portrayals nonwithstanding).
Heck: It had a lower per-capita rate of shootings and murders than cities like New York had back THEN.
Then you have the occasional thing like the gunfight at the OK Corral - which was a gang of corrupt cops executing some local businessmen. Look it up.
It's apropos to the current debate, too. The Earp Gang (also known as "The Pimp Gang") instituted gun control in Dodge City in order to make it easier to enforce their monopoly on prostitution and crooked gambling halls. (The concealed-carry shoulder holster was invented in response to them.) There are still descendants of the families in the area (including some of my in-laws) who occasionally find time to visit - and urinate on - Wyat's grave.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
http://breathedbrain.tumblr.com/image/412201190
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
In the USA, pretty much anyone can buy or sell a gun with little or no safety or sanity check, particularly at gun shows; kids clearly have easy access to them, as schools find it necessary to check for them on entry.
But you can't buy your kid a Kinder Egg, and now you can't even play making your hand into a gun.
You people over there need to make some serious changes to your laws before you become the laughing-stock of the westernised world.
That is far more true about cars. Focusing on that first would save far more lives. Heck, banning Automatic transmissions for everyone except those with disabilities would seriously reduce the number of serious accidents by forcing people to be more attentive when they drive.
Suffering sucks, but since you're an expert on perspective then please tell me who suffers more? The parents at Sandy Hook or the the parents St Jude Research hospital with kids fighting and dying of cancer? Or the parents whose kids join the army and die fighting for their country? Or the parents in other countries who kids are caught in the crossfire of war or die playing with landmines? Or the father / husband who listens to his wife and daughters being raped and burned alive because he didn't have a way to protect them from the thugs who have no regard for the laws limiting guns? Which one's suffering is more important?
No one would really feel comfortable answering that question and I only pose it because you wanted add a little perspective, but that's fooling yourself. You should have instead added a LOT of perspective. It's an issue that has many sides... not just two. And when you take notice that there are many sides it becomes a little harder to look at just one of them and call it fixable. Look, I'm a parent. Suffering and worry is unfortunately PART of life as a parent. Parents should not expect for their children to have perfect lives where no harm comes. At the same time no parent should ever have to bury a child and my heart wept for what those parents endure... not just at Sandy Hook, but all of those examples I gave. I honestly can't imagine it without being in physical pain myself.
However, while you have the right to voice your opinion that "we, as a nation, have proven ourselves incapable of properly storing, ascertaining who be allowed to have..." you should also keep in mind (really really keep it in mind) that a big part of why you have a protected right to voice your opinion (especially in Texas where if what you said got out people might come lookin' for ya) is because of all the suffering of all the moms and dads who lost their children and their own lives fighting for that right... a fight they would have surely lost to vastly more "powerful" force had they not had their own guns.
To know that they were to go through that suffering and to decide that it was worth it means that they were already suffering an even greater existence. They loved their families and they wanted them to be free. These people had to fight a government who wanted nothing more than squash them and who likely believed that these men were traitors and crazy nuts. There were plenty of people who were willing to just go with whatever the crown said (like you) in order to avoid more misery, but your right to say whatever you want to say today was won by a different group - a group that believed that freedom was more important than a little temporary suffering and who knew that ONLY the possibility of an armed revolt would keep the freedom they had fought for from being taken away by their new government.
You can disarm yourself if you wish and PERHAPS save a little suffering in the here and now, but dollars to donuts, in the end you will have created more suffering for far more people by allowing, no demanding, that not only you but everyone else be made a victim rather than remain people with some control over their own destiny.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
"The Waxwing Slain" is not my website.
You are welcome on my lawn.
America: the land of lacking reading comprehension when it doesn't suit your agenda. Nothing about being customizable, widely available, cheap to shoot, or accurate makes the AR-15 a more "powerful" weapon, especially compared to (as the OP said) the M14 which has a higher muzzle energy which would still be legal after this law. But hey, facts: how inconvenient!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
WE ARE AFRAID OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS! That is what this new law is effectively stating.
Funny, I thought the need to own guns for 'protection' and 'just in case', and ESPECIALLY Concealed Carry was explicitly stating.
People who carry concealed may do so out of fear, but it is fear of criminals with no regard for the law. Laws such as the New York law are passed out of fear of the law-abiding citizen, since by definition the aforementioned criminals don't care.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Reading comments here as a European leaves me feeling alien and uneducated in the nature of humans.
Apart from all the homicide-rate back and forth, let me add a personal anecdote. Usually anecdotes are meaningless in a good discussion, but arguments seem to be as well here...
My wife was shot at the age of 18 by a little nephew of hers, which left her left arm and hand dysfunctional; she nearly lost it. It determined the rest of her life. One can argue that it was an accident. But you know what made this happen? The fact that the gun existed, and the macho culture that went along with the guns. Without the gun, my wife would be able to ride a bicycle alone, now no more.
When I read the argument about the homicide rate being so low in Switzerland even though there are so many guns, then one forgets that aspect: guns in Switzerland are not considered a status symbol in a macho world, neither a defense weapon, neither being treated as a daily part of society. Most of the pro-gun-ownership people would not like the Swiss way either.
My wife just tested positively pregnant. I know she will cry a tear just from seeing the baby having two healthy arms.
Probably. Or the shapefiles will be controlled (they'll try, anyway).
Some (Sad) Real World Statistics:
That's .03% of the total population of the us. Only 11,493 of those are homicides (down to .00353025 now). Twice as many people die from falling unintentionally as die from guns every year. Unintentional poisoning kills 3x as many Alcohol abuse kills almost 10x as many. Guns are low on the list of killers.
- An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, Douglas J. PhD. “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated With Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 41 (2003): 771-82.)
I thought we were going for real world statistics not made up numbers? estimate is another word for made up.
- A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, Arthur L. et al., “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 45(2) (1998): 263-267)
That study was intentionally biased (even the author admits it) and excludes instances where criminals were not killed or injurred, ie if the criminal ran away after seeing the gun it's not counted in the study, thus skewing the numbers in favor of the point he wanted to make http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2001/22-times-less-safebranti-gun-lobby's-f.aspx
I'd finish out the rest of your list but I'm alas out of time. But the core point is guns just don't kill as many people are you'd like to claim and banning them won't do any better, the violent crime rate in the uk where guns are banned is 4x that of the us, worse yet gun crime has doubled since they banned guns.
You know..... people have always said that the only purpose to a database of gun owners is to know who owns guns so they can confiscate them. Think about the law. it requires registration of all gun owners (a database). If a mental health practitioner reports a dangerous individual, without the database there's no way for law enforcement to know the person owned a gun.
People say a lot of stupid, fear-based crap to keep everyone on edge. Growing up with several former detectives who owned arsenals, taught me to shoot and go hunting not one of them would be opposed and fearful of their guns being registered.
Anyone hunting big game with an AR-15 or fowl and neither uses say a .300 weatherby or a 12 gauge is full of crap. You were correct to point out a shotgun is a far better deterrent than an AR-15 to defend against a home invasion. Then again, how many home invasions have you ever had or your friends as you describe defend themselves against home invasions [plural] with their AR-15? Who do you hang around with that expect several never mind a single home invasion? The AR-15 never should have been declassified for military only purposes, period. No one should be owning the precursor to the M16, not to mention AK-47 style weaponry. Hunting is not what they are used for, unless by hunting you mean to kill enemies of the same species.
America is different than Canada. It's warm here...so we actually go out of our houses and spend time out on the streets.
We also have a defective judicial system that keeps putting violent criminals back on those streets (this is the #1 cause of violent crime in America btw)
But if you compare Canadian sentencing to U.S. sentencing, Canadian sentencing is way more lenient. The U.S. is world-famous for putting a huge percentage of it's population in prison. Canada incarcerates 117 per 100,000, the U.S. rate is a staggering 754 per 100,000
Put another way, the U.S. contains 5% of the world's population, but is host to 25% of the world's prisoners. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
So, according to actual statistics, the U.S. sticks more people in jail, for longer, than any other country. So no, it can't be your "defective judicial system that keeps putting violent criminals back on those streets"; that is, in fact, the opposite of what your judicial system is doing.
I want to point out that the person who wrote the above wants to have completely unrestricted access to firearms. And to prove that he is a responsible and law-abiding person who has every right to own firearms, he wants to kill a guy who makes music that I enjoy and promote by putting a link to his website in the "URL" section of my profile. Oh, and rape and kill his family too.
Those things I said about "Second Amendment activists"? I rest my case.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Adam broke into the safe while she was traveling. Then shot her with a .22 rifle when she returned, and finished his plans (a couple of days with her dead on the bed).
Safes keep children and lawyers from guns. There isn't a safe that will withstand a smart and determined attacker with time to get it open.
Horse shit on the safe meme. A cheap gun safe is easy to get into. A professional quality custom made safe or commercial level apparatus is in all practical purposes impossible to breach without access codes, custom keys, etc. Do I have to cite Banks and their safes? Or those who actually own stuff of value worth millions or more? Security systems that need expertise to breach are affordable and available. Adam won't be getting into them.
Bottom line, what sort of moron owns guns when their own adult child is mentally unstable? I'd say hundreds of thousands of Americans fit that bill.
Newtown was coined as one of the safest places to raise a family, yet later we find the town is a gunhaven for god fearing folk. They built their own giant powder keg and never seemed to get that one of their own would light the fuse?
Sorry, but calling this an isolated incident is an insult. We have millions of unemployed adults who own firearms and who see their life styles going into the crapper, yet you think they are all rational, respectable gun owners?
Of course, whenever they go postal I guess its comforting to label them as mentally unstable and thus in need of treatment, instead of addressing the real problem: Unstable economies produce a lot of starving people who will commit crimes [or end the lives of those they feel have wronged them before they take their own lives in acts of desparation].
So instead of fixing the economy we have douchebag GOP members on ideological rants holding a nation hostage [and holding a history of that ideology proven them wrong]; and recognizing that stalemate, several states and soon members of Congress seeing patterns of increased fear have decided to take action you consider foolhardy.
I consider arming everyone in a nation of nearly 320 million people is insane. Most people don't have the coordination to hit a ball with a bat, yet we should arm them? Fuck that.
Three hundred plus million guns in a country where easily over 60-70% of the country doesn't own a gun means we have a concentrated collective group of fear and propaganda overshadowing conscientious traditional hunting advocacy who they themselves should be up in arms for such lax laws on gun ownership and possession.
Since 2002 nearly 100 million have been purchased. For what? Hunting? My ass. Fear drives people to make irrational choices in life. The NRA pipes out fear.
I grew up Hunting and Fishing. I never got excited about a weekly target shooting time. Hunting season came, we hunted several weekends, and then it was over. Today, people blow a nut visiting the gun range on a weekly basis. The mindset is fucked up. It's all fear marketing.
The NRA would love to arm every person in America. That's a good $20-$30 billion in additional powder keg sales!
EVERY GUN is a military derivative firearm you Texas queer...
- Most hunting rifles are based off of Mausers, and Springfields, and other older military designs. - The Winchester Repeating Arms were were developed for the military - The flintlock, another military derivative rifle.
And in the future, when laser guns are viable. They'll be military derivatives.
Yes, and at one time weapons of war were relegated to spears and arrows, both of which suck at long range, you can dodge and are single action. When guns went from bolt action, to hundreds of rounds per second something got lost in your grasp of military grade to consumer grade.
I would argue that a shotgun loaded with bird shot is a much better option for home defense, but I digress
Shotgun, yes, bird shot, no. Bird shot tends to produce nasty-looking but very shallow wounds which will generally not stop a determined assailant. For an effective man-stopper, you need deeper penetration. Yes, that means that your deeper-penetrating projectiles will also penetrate walls better, but anything that will penetrate a human body sufficiently to have a prayer of stopping an attack will also go through some walls.
There are numerous web sites and YouTube videos that demonstrate the inadequacy of bird shot for home defense. Bird shot is for birds, if you need to shoot people use buck shot.
As for an AR for home defense, it's certainly perfectly functional, and actually doesn't create as much overpenetration risk as is often assumed, due to the tendency of the bullets to tumble and fragment. But a shotgun loaded with buckshot is a more effective man-stopper at close range and will overpenetrate less.
Do me a favor, Stand 20 feet from me while I pump a couple 12 gauge choke enable rounds into you. I bet you don't get pissed off. I bet you're dead.
You have to understand that no matter which side of the debate you're on, rarely does "we as a nation" or "we the people" ever include government and its direct followers (i.e the loyal military, disloyal and former military would be just as ineligible for firearms as "we the people")
Well, I just pointed out that it does.
No, the suffering happened because the legal gun owner, the shooter's mom, failed to keep her legally owned gun safe. Her house was certainly not a gun-free zone. She herself became a victim to her failure (whether or not the school was gun-free is irrelevant, she didn't die there). I'm not trying to bad mouth the dead, but she and all others might not be victims at all if she did better.
While that is a good point, it is worth noting that the school was probably chosen precisely because the shooter didn't expect (correctly as it turned out) armed resistance. And he shot himself the moment police officers showed up which accord to a glance in Wikipedia appears to be about 10 to 15 minutes after the shooting started.
*ahem*
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2148355/Convicted-felon-Randy-Smith-turns-Super-Soaker-water-pistol-deadly-shotgun.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165531/Its-wild-wild-West-Midlands-Homemade-gun-Uzis-Ak47s-make-huge-haul-firearms-seized-police-just-year.html
There was also the case of a UK fellow arrested a few years back for merely posting how to machine your own firearms.
No, the principle is right. Saying "I shouldn't have to justify" isn't the same as saying "government can impose no limits". Of course it can impose limits, but those limits should be unrelated to my "justification", they should apply equally to everybody.
That's a completely different argument, but one I also disagree with. You argue that banning should be based on a balanced cost/benefit analysis that gives equal weights to both sides. But that's open to political abuse, and it doesn't increase safety.
I think the burden of proof for limiting something by law should be stronger: proponents of limits should have to demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that what they want to limit is harmful and that the limits will be effective.
That's easy: if it is controversial, the risk generally isn't clear and obvious enough to warrant legislative restrictions. People still have recourse through the courts, and if the public underestimates a risk, court cases over time will shift the perception until legislation is passed. But unlike politicians, courts operate much more based on facts and evidence.
That reasoning is rooted in the assumption that your redneck neighbor is a potential criminal. That is a risk we deliberately ignore in a free society; it is an unacceptable assumption, incompatible with the Constitution. Once you assume that your redneck neighbor is not a criminal, there is zero increase to your likelihood of being shot from his ownership of a gun. (On the other hand, if your neighbor has the intent to kill you, gun control will not prevent him from doing that or even be a serious obstacle.)
There is a second, more practical reason why your reasoning doesn't work: when you look statistically, there simply is no relationship between the rate at which your neighbors own firearms and your risk of getting shot. Some of the highest risk neighborhoods in the US have comparatively low gun ownership rates. Your neighbors don't randomly turn into homicidal maniacs and shoot you only if they have a gun; rather, someone who develops the intent to kill with near 100% efficiency will acquire the means to do it.
Try READING what our founders wrote! (not the modern interpretations by a bunch of ivy-covered elites... or the fevered hallucinations of the morons at HuffPo or Kos) The founders wrote LOTS of stuff and it's readily available (and as a bonus it's even written in English - though admittedly this means language might be a problem for recent high-school graduates....)
The "militia" as ABSOLUTELY NOT the National Guard! That would be logically IMPOSSIBLE The Militia is ALL free adult American men who are mentally competent, and who do not object on religious grounds. They are intended to exists for two reasons:
The National Guard in the US is in the President's chain-of-command and therefore, by definition, is the opposite of "the militia" our founders wrote about.
A government that does not trust its citizens with guns is a government that deserves no trust from its citizens
Has the NRA actually advocated for attempting to prevent people with mental problems from getting them? or are those people advocating that we improve the nature of the mental health care. Most of the people I've heard saying we need to do something about the mental health system say we shouldn't have additional restrictions on guns to the mentally ill, playing up that angle tends to discourage them from getting the help they need as they then have a fear of losing their rights. The responsibility for keeping the mental ill falls to those people who have guns they might obtain. Keep your own guns locked up and help your family get the help they need.
No one should be owning the precursor to the M16, not to mention AK-47 style weaponry.
I agree. Take them away from the military and the paramilitary and I will be glad to not have one myself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When guns went from bolt action, to hundreds of rounds per second something got lost in your grasp of military grade to consumer grade.
[citation needed]
The reason that the second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to the people and not the nation is to help prevent tyranny, because the founding fathers were familiar with history and knew what happened to a disarmed populace. The whole point of the second amendment is to protect the right of the people to bear military weapons. Funny how the gun control nuts want to cite the word "militia" in the second amendment when it suits their purposes, but not otherwise.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In my case, on a different thread.
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IANAL but I am pretty sure he would need to make an actual threat or statement of intent. For example, he would have to say that he was going to put that bullet there, or that he is encouraging other specific people to put the bullet there, not that the bullet should be there.
Might be a good idea to err on the side of caution when expressing such opinons about the President. The Secret Service is apt to be a trifle techy about such suggestions.
I know that misinterpretation is a long word but it's in the dictionary. I'm describing the nuts that for some reason think the 2nd amendment is an excuse to have the most effective guns they can afford for the purpose of killing government forces. The example played out recently with the dead firefighters shows just how stupid and tragic such a misinterpretation is when actually applied.
Sorry, I do not see that as being rational. Consider how such a counter-revolution would play out and what sort of place you would end up with in those pockets that would have temporary success.
This is a common and often misinterpreted rubuttel to the aforementioned misinterpretation. I took that oath. Why? Cause I was joining the military. I was going to work for Uncle Sam. Those politicians that take it are also going to work for Uncle Sam. Have you ever worked for a company that has explicitly told you to overthrow the CEO if he fails? Of course not and the US Gov isn't gonna tell you to do it either. Enemies foreign and domestic are enemies OF the goverment, not the government itself. So who are these domestic enemies you say? Well that would be folks like yourself (and say The Confederate States of America) who against the Constitution, advocate treasonous acts like 'rising up' against the government. That is there specifically to make it legal for a soldier or LEO under lawful orders from someone like the Governor (who took the oath) to shoot you in the face with impunity. The Militia that the 2nd refers to is there to repel military invasions of conquering nations, not to cut the gov's own throat. I assure you if it comes down to needing to activate the Unorganized Militia, then the gov, against all weapons bans, will readily hand you a well used M16...and the dude next to you the magazine for it.
No thanks. But if you like I can find you a dozen news reports of home intruders who were shot with birdshot and didn't even bother going to the hospital.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And if they're wearing soft armor it won't do shit for them because it'll just cave in their chest cavity.
Newton's third law says you're full of shit. As does anyone with significant experience shooting things with shotguns.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That's a reasonable approach, I suppose. Personally, if someone is in my house and I feel I need to shoot them, I want buckshot from the beginning. I couldn't care less about my furniture -- if I'm shooting someone it's to defend my life and my family's lives, so I want them stopped now, not three shells from now (nit: "round" refers to solid bullets, not shot shells).
Plus, most shotguns don't hold that many shells and contrary to common belief it's not only possible but quite easy to miss with a shotgun. Given that, I don't want to waste any shells.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You should be banned, and get to explain yourself to the police. Ratzo can be tedious, but death threats are way, way over the line. You are way wrong and damage the cause you claim to support. I oppose just about everything Ratzo writes, but I would defend him against your physical attack if it came down to it and I was present. You need to rethink your life before you find yourself in prison.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
. . . he wants to kill a guy who makes music that I enjoy and promote by putting a link to his website in the "URL" section of my profile. Oh, and rape and kill his family too.
Those things I said about "Second Amendment activists"? I rest my case.
PopeRatzo, you may recall that I frequently oppose you in strong terms. What that cretin did in threatening you and your family was vile, completely over the line, in short: evil*. He should be banned and get to explain himself to the police. If we were at a local Italian bistro, I trust you know one or two, enjoying good food and a heated discussion, and that foul creature attacked, I would gladly join in your defense with whatever was at hand. Pax. (I also relied to him separately.)
Oh, and no, he doesn't in any way represent the tens of millions of law abiding Americans that support and defend their second amendment rights any more than the Weather Underground represents ACLU members defending the first amendment.
* In the traditionally understood, completely non-ironic sense.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Notice he wrote "rifle", not "gun," and that is correct. As you can see here, blunt objects (hammers, clubs, etc.) were used to kill more people than rifles from 2005-2009.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The rest of us find the subject alternately funny and boring
And yet you are posting in this discussion? Does that mean you are participating in what you describe as "wanking" as well?
Just curious.
And actually, many cultures value both arms and the skill to use them well.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's a matter of imagination, not subversion. Nanny state dependents with no imagination can't understand that there are other ways to engage in mayhem.
Yeah, but penis extension worshipers just don't get the kick from propane.
How this stupidity is moderated as informative I can't imagine. I suppose all the female gun owners have penis envy too? The weak people who defend themselves with guns just wish they had bigger dicks?
Grow up.
I should grow up?
You do know that Bushmaster were advertising the AR15 with the slogan "consider your man card reissued"?
I'm just assuming they know their market.
Yes, and I'm also familiar with the concept of marketing. Your statement on the other hand was not marketing or anything like it but was intended to belittle and propagate stereotypes. So yes. Grow up.
What is your problem with my using belittling stereotypes about mass murderers?
Oh, it was your instant assumption I was talking about your penis substitute, not Adam Lanza's one. Maybe you should grow up.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The rest of us find the subject alternately funny and boring
And yet you are posting in this discussion? Does that mean you are participating in what you describe as "wanking" as well?
Just curious.
Well, this is slashdot. What do you expect, serious discussion?
And actually, many cultures value both arms and the skill to use them well.
No, problem with that. It's the fetishists that are the problem.
Someone who thinks they need an AR15 to "defend themselves" is delusional.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yeah, you're right.
On the other hand, he makes a very strong case for why there should not be unfettered and unlimited access to firearms. Some people just can't handle it.
There are reasonable limits put on every single one of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution that have been upheld by many Supreme Courts. The gentleman with the threats is why.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Godwin FTW!
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
I think the tickle in your throat is your brain or your conscience. Because the links you provide are *not* to "stories from the UK or France or Germany or Sweden of crazed killers who've cooked up some clever death dealing machine in their kitchen and then wreaked mayhem on the streets". In fact:
- your first story is about a Californian criminal making a gun that wouldn't have worked if he had fired it, but he didn't fire it. In Fresno. So not the UK or another Western European state, not a clever death dealing machine, and no mayhem. Apart from that, great choice of article!
- your second story is at least in the right country, but is not about clever death dealing machines -- it's about replica guns -- and is not about mayhem on the streets (because none has been implicated in a mass killing). Another great choice of article!
The OP argued that tighter gun control would lead to attacks using *different methods* eg Sarin gas, bombs, etc. I will now spell this out for you, as you are either too stupid or too obtuse to realise what this is about: there are no examples of people carrying out mass attacks using Sarin gas, bombs or other non-gun methods that they cooked up at home in Western Europe, despite gun control. Gun control does not therefore lead to attacks using different methods.
Back in your box
I'm playing devils advocate in this post and trying to get you non gun owners to see how unreasonable you are being when you tell gun owners what they should be allowed to buy and own.
Every year there are FAR more deaths caused by automobiles than firearms can even begin to touch. But do we blame the 80 year old who is probably too old to drive and hit the accelerator thinking it was the brake, and mowing down dozens of people in the process? Or do we blame the dangerous automobile which in the hands of the inept, or the maniacal, allows a normal human being to become an unstoppable killing machine.
Imagine instead of a school shooting, the debate was somebody driving into a crowded market and running dozens of children over. And in response to this, instead of seeing it for the singular act of craziness it is, the politicians and non car owners go up in arms saying that cars are dangerous, and no reasonable person could ever need a car with more than 60 horsepower because the speed limit is 55-70mph in most states. Then New York passes a landmark law that bans all sports cars, all trucks, and mandates that no car can have more than 60 horsepower or a gas tank that can run for more than an hour so that people cannot go on long police chases.
Now imagine, as a car owner, having these people telling you that YOUR car is the reason for the tragic mowing down of little kids, not the stupid driver, but the car itself and then further imagine that the politicians and non car owners start trying to tell you that nobody needs a car with more than 60 horsepower or an hour of gasoline.
That is exactly what is happening right now to gun owners. The same way that you might like to drive something more than an econobox because it's fun, and you like sporty cars, some gun owners like exotic guns, and semi automatic rifles. You don't like faster cars because you think you're going to drive in the Indy 5000 some day any more than some gun owners like assault rifles because they think they might need to fend off armed attackers.
Except that you may never be exptected to drive in a professional racecar race but it's absolutely important to the freedom of your country that you should be able to arm yourself to fend off all attackers foreign AND DOMESTIC. The reason we have the right to bear arms is to defend our nation from all tyranny, whether it be a corrupt government or a foreign invader.
As many people have stated, assault rifles make up less than 1% of firearm deaths every year. Mass shootings happen incredibly infrequently and they are the fault of deranged individuals. If I needed to kill dozens of people I wouldn't need an AR15, I'd just need to point the front end of my car into a crowd of people.....your car is more of a killing machine than any rifle, and everybody has one.
Society operates on trust. Trust that the other people you meet arn't trying to do you harm. This is the only way our society can operate. If we operated on the assumption that everyone was trying to do us harm, we could never leave our houses, we could never do business with each other, socialize, work with each other, in effect society would cease to exist. The fact that mass murders sometimes occur is a small price we sometimes pay for having an open society built on trust. Inevitably some people will betray that trust, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't trust each other, it means some people are despicable.
How to win at terrorism, attack people, and instead of blaming you they blame each other. Instead of punishing you, they punish themselves. Instead of taking away your freedom by putting you in prison, they take away their own freedoms. This is how terrorism wins folks.
Blame the asshole who pulled the trigger, not the weapon they chose and definitely not the people who also use those weapons. Think about the killing power of an automobile the next time you are driving past a school crossing full of children. Trust.
And for the record, you don't even have a constitutional right to own and operate an automobile but you do for owning and using firearms.
Last time I checked, the taking of property without due process is illegal. I doubt this will stand in it's present form.
Tell that to the guy caught with pot who gets his car sold at auction.
Due process is whatever the cops/feds want it to be.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Because your "conflict" is some nebulous, nonspecific and inconequential worry about the possibility that someone's property could be used to injure you. The "conflict" on my part is the appropriation, confiscation, or deprivation of my property. This is independent of the my rights as confirmed in the Constitution. Since you spelled favor as favour, you need not argue the second point.
That's .03% of the total population of the us. Only 11,493 of those are homicides (down to .00353025 now). Twice as many people die from falling unintentionally as die from guns every year. Unintentional poisoning kills 3x as many Alcohol abuse kills almost 10x as many. Guns are low on the list of killers.
You're correct that there are other causes of mortality that are worse than gun homicides. Things like heart disease and cancer have a much higher mortality rate. But another way to look at it is we have ~four 9/11's every year from gun homicides.
I thought we were going for real world statistics not made up numbers? estimate is another word for made up.
Here is the study abstract, and how the numbers were collected:
STUDY OBJECTIVE: I test the hypothesis that having a gun in the home is a risk factor for adults to be killed (homicide) or to commit suicide.
METHODS: Two case-control analyses were based on national samples of subjects 18 years of age or older. Homicide and suicide case subjects were drawn from the 1993 National Mortality Followback Survey. Living control subjects were drawn from the 1994 National Health Interview Survey. Ten control subjects matched by sex, race, and age group were sought for each case subject.
RESULTS: The homicide sample consisted of 1,720 case subjects and 8,084 control subjects. Compared with adults in homes with no guns, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for homicide was 1.41 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.20 to 1.65) for adults with a gun at home and was particularly high among women (adjusted OR 2.72; 95% CI 1.89 to 3.90) compared with men (adjusted OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.49) and among nonwhite subjects (adjusted OR 1.74; 95% CI 1.37 to 2.21) compared with white subjects (adjusted OR 1.27; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.56). Further analyses revealed that a gun in the home was a risk factor for homicide by firearm means (adjusted OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.40 to 2.12) but not by nonfirearm means (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.62 to 1.11). The suicide sample consisted of 1,959 case subjects and 13,535 control subjects. The adjusted OR for suicide was 3.44 (95% CI 3.06 to 3.86) for persons with a gun at home. However, further analysis revealed that having a firearm in the home was a risk factor for suicide by firearm (adjusted OR 16.89; 95% CI 13.26 to 21.52) but was inversely associated with suicide by other means (adjusted OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.55 to 0.84).
CONCLUSION: Having a gun at home is a risk factor for adults to be shot fatally (gun homicide) or commit suicide with a firearm. Physicians should continue to discuss with patients the implications of keeping guns at home. Additional studies are warranted to address study limitations and to better understand the implications of firearm ownership.
That study was intentionally biased (even the author admits it) and excludes instances where criminals were not killed or injurred, ie if the criminal ran away after seeing the gun it's not counted in the study, thus skewing the numbers in favor of the point he wanted to make http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2001/22-times-less-safebranti-gun-lobby's-f.aspx
I'd finish out the rest of your list but I'm alas out of time. But the core point is guns just don't kill as many people are you'd like to claim and banning them won't do any better, the violent crime rate in the uk where guns are banned is 4x that of the us, worse yet gun crime has doubled since they banned guns.
Intentionally Biased Huh? Much like that website you linked to? I'll give you this: Certainly more study and better data is needed. Unfortunately federal funding for unbiased studies seems to have vanished.
I wonder if one reasonable interpretation of the 2nd amendment could require periodic training of 'the militia'? Why couldn't the president require two weekends a month of training for firearm owners, so they would be ready if Mexico or Canada invades?
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
Here in Aussie we have much stricter gun laws and guess what by proportion we have less crimes committed with guns. It's a no brainier.
Those who live in glass houses ought not throw stones. While the rest of the world has a reducing violent crime rate Australia's actually going up and has always been around 2x the rate of the us and is quickly approaching 3x the rate of the us.
Federal funding for unbiased studies was effectively banned, the cdc is not allowed to publish pro gun materials, as such any study they do is a risk for them. The article I linked to covers how the author of the study you cited admits hes biased, how is pointing out someones own admission of fault a bias?
Well WTF are the anti-gunners thinking, banning clips for "assault" weapons over 6. My Tech firearm has a 13 in the clip and one chambered, so that said, guess the weapons of choice will be concealed from know on, by the POS's, but yet again since when do criminals obey the law? This freakin' country still is going down the toilet.........all due to the clueless........
Go read the Constitution. Nowhere in that document, the Bill of Rights, or in any of the Amendments is the word tyrant, tyranny, or oppression used. Not once. If the founding fathers were so worried about a tyrant taking over the new governement they fought so hard over then one would think they would have mentioned it. They didn't. The 2nd Amendment clearly spells out what the right to bear arms is used for: the Militia. If they wanted citizens to have weaponry for any reason at all then the Amendment would have simply said "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" but it has that qualifying statement first. If you study legalese then you would see that one or 2 extra little words means one hell of a difference in the application of any law or contract. Regardless of what the founding fathers or interested parties at the time wrote in thier personal or academic writings as for the reason they were doing X, they didn't codify that into law. That is a mistake on thier part. This entire nonsense could be completely cleared up with an amendment that does clearly state what they mean. You can see it in many of the newer amendments. Starting with the 13th Amendment most of them have as a final section: "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." Why did they have to add that? Well because of the 'rules lawyer' type of folks who would try and universally apply it. It explicitly says Congress, not the President, not the Supreme Court, State Legislature or even you have that authority. Only Congress does. In that light, you cannot reasonably argue that the 2nd says anything other than what it says. If that isn't good enough for you then I suggest you and like-minded folks get together and petition for an amendment that does clarify what the 2nd says. I reject the typical 4 Box method of political action. Not once in the Constitution does it advocate for anyone to go get an ammo box and overthrow the government. The treason clause actually criminalizes it. Now please don't misconstrue anywhere in either of my posts that I hate you all and want to take away your guns. I am not arguing for or against them. I'm simply arguing against the belief that our forefathers wanted us as a nation to rise up and destroy a corrupt government or that enemies foreign or domestic included the governement itself. There is no codifed law supporting that notion. PS I apologize for the wall of text. Evidently the default setting in /. for plain text doesn't allow for carriage returns. The dropdown box that used to let you change it appears to be gone and whatever is supposed to pop up when you hit the options button is blocked by GPO or the firewall.
Part of the issue is what is a right? Is a right something I can do that nobody can take from me? Or just things that the federal government can't take, but the states can? Or that the states and feds can't, but people can? Or is a right something that nobody can take from me, public or private? So many libertarians here assert that someone can take rights from you because they aren't the government. I disagree that makes it not a right, if someone can take it from you.
Learn to love Alaska
It's rather unlikely that the lawmakers gave the bill much thought from a technical perspective.
Hit nail on the head! They were so stupid that there are no exemptions. Not even for law enforcement. So all of their nice new 9MM service pistols are illegal. Now they are trying to back track and fix the knee jerk reaction law. The responsible thing is to admit their error and repeal the law in its entirety. Better yet, eliminate "gun free zones" and require the issue of concealed carry permits. You know, common sense laws.
Isn't the purpose of having so much guns in the US that you can topple the goverment in case of tyranny? If that's the case, shouldn't you have all kinds of weapons, like land mines, machine guns, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, EMP ...
Because if the revolution was today, the British sure would have all those kind of things.
United States vs. Miller the court (1939) - this is where the courts deemed a shortened shotgun under 18" had no use in a milita not being considered a military type arm. Ironic, that the debate today is "no military arms". That's right, in 1939 you couldn't own it because the military didn't use it. Now you can't own it because the military owns it.
The point being, gun control lunatics will leap on ANY argument or reason, no matter how shallow, to support banning and disarming us.
CASE IN POINT: Military is armed with fully automatics, and I am already limited to a semi-auto.
LOL
Okay, idiot modded me down to ZERO, for being right....(and perhaps using the word Moron, but it was used correctly in this context)
...that none of the items on your list requires you to demonstrate an ability to safely operate that M16, or even have eyesight good enough that you don't mistake a brown couch for a sneaky buffalo that's broken into your home to steal your TV. Where is the harm in requiring someone to step up and take personal responsibility to prove they have the ability, skill, and knowledge to operate dangerous equipment safely?
Reducing the number of "guns freely available" (used in a general sense) will reduce the amount of gun-related (used in a general sense) violence. It's simple statistics, good, bad, left, right, whatever. And it's specific. Fewer guns at hand means fewer incidents where someone picks up a gun in a heated moment *because the gun is there* and shoots someone else with it. Fewer accidents *because the gun is there* will happen. This is math, not politics.
If you're looking at "why the 2nd" it's because the "tools" are the most protected elements of the whole deal, rather than the actual citizens. My uterus is more regulated than the "tools" used in the 2nd. We have individual responsibilities when it comes to Free Speech (not allowed to say "fire" in a crowded theater), voting (provide proof of residence and citizenship), assembling (peaceful, and you sometimes need a permit), press (you get in trouble for printing lies, although that one seems to be eroding under the "it was editorial/an infomercial" artful dodge these days), and religion (your right free exercise of your religion stops when it runs up against someone else's right to life/liberty/pursuit in that you can't stone people to death for apostasy or offer up unsuspecting co-eds as sacrifices for Great Cthulhu).
Yet even though the 2nd even states that "a well-regulated militia" is what predicates the citizen's right to keep and bear arms, there is a powerful force actively working to erase the whole idea of regulation of any sort, even if it's just to demonstrate you have the personal responsibility to operate said tools without infringing on some other citizen's "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." And the mere mention of maybe having some of that personal responsibility turns people hysterical.
It's not just in the wake of a tragedy that this happens, either. The difference is that the tragedy brings to light a situation that's been successfully suppressed up until tragedies like Newtown happen and people are shocked enough to break out of the "these are not the droids you're looking for" hand-waving that the Powers That Be regularly engage in.
I think nitpicking down to the type of gun or the type of ammo is a bit of a distraction in that it focuses on the minutia of what is a conceptual problem. Although, for the record, if you need 30 high-speed rounds to hit your target, maybe that makes its own case for the whole "demonstrate that you know how to use your tool" thing. Either that, or you need to sign up for Stormtrooper duty.
These are all cosmetic and none are assault weapons by a proper definition. Ask anyone who has been in the military. Assault weapons have been almost impossible for the private citizen to own for over 50 years. TThese are called assault weapons only because the Left changed the definition to include a whole bunch of characteristics. They also removed the need to fire full auto. IE: They changed the definition to suit their needs. The school shooting has been used as a bogus excuse for firearms regulation, even though an assault weapon, or rather what the Left now defines erroneously as an assault weapon was not use at the school. Outside of the handguns he used the only weapon found was a shotgun contrary to what the bumbling medical examiner said in the interview. None of the proposed laws would have made any difference Rifles are high profile weapons so they are easier to pick on. The AR platform , short for ArmaLite is a very popular hunting and target rifle with many millions of the semiautomatic version in civilian hands Hammers and clubs account for about twice as many murders as do rifles. Bare hands account for over twice times as many. http://www.naturalnews.com/038687_homicides_hammers_rifles.html Then of course there are those who justify cars as being necessary even though they account for over 33,000 deaths per yeas which is down from a peak of over 50,000. So I guess they are saying 30,000 dead is just the cost of doing business as usual. To those losing family members, dead is dead and should not be justifiable! period. BTW the local sherrif told me that close to a third of the drivers on the road in our county are driving on a suspended license, or never had one at all. One of 'em drove into the side of my TA. No license, no insurance, wrong license plates...tried to run.
Actually seven bills per politician sounds damn good!