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New York Pistol Permit Owner List Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "On Friday, The Journal News caved under pressure of gun advocates and shut down the interactive maps which contained the names and addresses of licensed gun owners in upstate New York. The maps are still visible on the site, however they are simply static images. The Journal News published the interactive maps on December 23 which caused significant backlash. In a similar move, Gawker published the names of licensed gun owners in New York City without addresses. New York state Senator Greg Ball (Republican) called the removal of the data a 'huge win.' On Saturday, an anonymous user leaked the raw data used to build The Journal News maps."
i have to say i agree
all a criminal would have to do is sit there wait till you leave and go get a few
how can one leak data which has been made available through a FOIA request?
Straw men, straw men everywhere. Not to mention hyperbole, ad hominem, argument from ignorance, proof by verbosity, shifting the burden of proof... I could go on and on. but I won't bother. I just said this so anyone reading your post would stop and think a minute.
Now crawl back under your bridge.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It easily be treated as a "don't mess with these folks" list, as well...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Cool, now I know which homes to break into.
Why wasn't it "leaked" .. well.. before all this pressure to ban guns ?
It's "published", not leaked. Intentionally. Probably to apply pressure on gun owners or to get them into trouble of having a gun, somehow.
What's next ? We gonna ban hammers as well ? I read there are many people killing other people with a hammer. Maybe we can ban sugar.. Hell, more people died from sugar then from guns (not counting the military or criminals that will still have guns regardless of you ban them or not).
People, shit happens, it's unavoidable. The world is full of good people and equally full of bad ones/psychotic-violent ones. Whatever you ban won't change that and mentioned ones are still gonna do their own thing.
In 20 years time you will need permission to go out of the house if the public allows these bans on everything to be carried out.
Freedom of speech guarantees speech free of governmental censorship. It doesn't defend you from public opinion. If anything, this case strenghtened free speech because it showed its opponents that even without governmental oversight, unacceptable speech is not without consequences.
In a similar move, Gawker published the names of licensed gun owners in New York City without addresses
The only reason John Cook didn't publish them is because the NYPD didn't give them to him.. John Cook made it pretty clear that he would have published the addresses if he had them.
Because the NYPD is more interested in raping and/or eating ladies and spying on Muslims than it is in honoring public records law, the list contains only the names, and not the addresses, of the licensees.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
That merely lists the main ingredients for what appears to be the gold standard for political discourse in the country. Including that last bit. Yes.
Seriously. I'm in Canada and own no guns. You're doing it wrong.
All you idiots are doing is invading peoples' privacy, advocating vigilante justice against people who have broken no laws, and providing a database of places that criminals can go steal guns that won't be traced to them.
Proper education and required licensing country-wide is the direction you should be going in. And that involves posting your Congressmens' e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Not the constituents.
Because they make any real, useful, gun control much less likely to happen. Their grandstanding is counter productive.
For example you try and say "Hey, we really should register firearms. After all you register your car, why not guns too? It would allow for some tracking and accountability, and in the event someone becomes a prohibited person easier allow courts to determine if they have any guns that need to be surrendered." Well the gun lobby shoots back with "No, unacceptable, if you have a registry it can be used to target gun owners." You respond "That's silly, it would be used only for lawful purposes by the proper authorities."
Then, this happens, in a place that has a gun registry. Now the gun lobby doesn't have to talk in hypotheticals, or other nations, they can point to something that happened right in America that is precisely the kind of shit they are talking about. Now more moderate gun owners, who might have been amenable, or at least accepting, of the idea hate it because they believe what the gun lobby is saying.
Gun haters have to accept and get over the fact that guns are NOT going to be banned, period, end of story, unless the second amendment is repealed. All kinds of arguments have been tried and all have failed, the supreme court has ruled that the 2nd does in fact mean that gun ownership is a protected, individual, right.
As such trying stupid shit to do things that are bans but not in name, or to harass or make things difficult for gun owners are counter productive. All they do is polarize things, convince gun owners that any and all controls are bad because they'll be abused.
Stunts like this are nothing but harmful.
Thus speaks someone who thinks with his guts and not his brain.
When did all sex offenders become pedophiles? Most of them are not.
When did all pedophiles become criminals? Most of them never commit any crimes. You don't commit rapes because you are sexually attracted to women (or men), do you?
Do you know the recidivism rate for child molestation compared to other crimes? Like, for instance, gun crime?
Did you know that when you are willing to deny some people their rights, you also say that it's okay to deny you your rights when you disgust enough people?
All violent/abusive crimes are bad, whether they're sexual or not. But people are capable of changing for the better, which is why we do not give them life in prison, and consider their debt to society paid when they have served their sentence. In civilized societies, at least.
New York City has some of the strictest gun laws in in the USA, exactly how does one get a permit/license?
How many people on that list are publicly on record as supporting "gun control"?
I do not want to see the addresses published, it is a very different thing to go to a government office, present
identification, and ask for a copy of the list, then to be able to anonymously access the information.
It's true! <These> kill more children each year than pedophiles, so let's ban those!
To be fair, I don't think foot fetishists kill many children at all. It's kind of not their thing.
The people who were listed were the ones following the law - it didn't tell you who had guns, just who had permits.
This information was gathered using freedom of information requests, compiled, and then publicly displayed by a single entity to promote their agenda.
This wasn't journalism, but activism.
To those who see no harm in this, how about if ALL public records were equally displayed - your neighborhood map would show that the person on the corner had a DUI, the guy down the street beats his wife, the nice old lady across the street was arrested at the grocery store for shoplifting, the young couple next door bounced checks...
After all, it is legal right? I'm sure nothing bad would happen. :/
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Hell, why not publish data on who has large coin collections at home while we're at it. This is yet another example why people shouldn't register their weapons with the government.
Why is this modded down?
...
The issue really is privacy rights vs the 1st amendment, not the 2nd amendment vs the 1st, but very large numbers of people seem to not care what the issue really is because they have an agenda (either banning guns or preventing the banning of guns) that trumps their abilities to discuss or think rationally about what just happened.
Suppose that was a list of Muslims, or Black people, or High school dropouts, or women who have had an abortion, or Smokers, or children on ADD meds, or SSI recipients, or people who have declared bankruptcy,
Is this really the can of worms we will ignore being opened, all because we want it to be about the 2nd amendment rather than the 1st?
"His name was James Damore."
Don't forget Obama ordering the murders of Americans overseas without due process.
Yes, shit does happen, but with a hammer an accident usually results in little more than a bruised fingernail. Check out the Twitter feed for @GunDeaths to see just how many people are killed by firearms every day. And almost every one of those is a case where the gun is being used as the manufacturer intended, not an accident.
I love this chestnut of a retort.
Please check out @cardeaths and explain to me why guns are ever mentioned with the astonishingly high fatality rate involving cars. Your fallacious (because there are many hammer deaths) comparison of guns to hammers pales when we compare gun deaths to automobile deaths. Even when we adjust the numbers to be percentages of ownership or per capita, cars are FAR more dangerous than guns.
So, will you be campaigning to ban cars? Or, are you a hypocrite that doesn't care about the children?
We are not denying them their rights, when they commit a crime and break the law, they are voluntarily giving up their rights.
What rights, and for how long? There's a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the Bill of Rights for a reason; the punishment must fit the crime. In the case of sex crimes, the lifelong punishment that comes after all jail time has been served, fines paid, etc. is almost always excessive.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
...when thieves break into their houses looking for guns.
What we really need is a list of every single person's name and address who has ever posted anti-gun rhetoric online. That could be fun, right? Knowing which of their neighbors who will absolutely never have protection in their homes might be useful information. Or, the criminals could just get the gun owners list and by process of elimination know which homes are free of guns. You were absolutely right. By gun owner logic or any other logic, that list does make it safer for gun owners. Its their non-gun owning neighbors who need to worry.
I remember that one. Those "Americans" were bunking up with known terrorists that had explosives and military weapons and were already about to be bombed. The military was about to do a surgical strike on the terrorists when they found out some US citizens decided to stay over and help them with bomb making and it went all the way up to the President to find out if they should continue with their strike.
I'm sorry, but if some US citizens decided to head over to Russia during the war, I don't see why we should have stopped our attacks against a known enemy just because someone decided to defect.
If they were kidnapped, that would be one thing, but to be a traitor is entirely another. Throughout history, most countries treated traitors worse than enemies.
more children are killed by [illegal] firearms each year.
Please tell me how making more laws will stop illegal firearms.
By Taylor Berman:
On Friday, The Journal News took down its controversial, interactive online map of licensed gun owners in Westchester and Rockland counties in New York. According to Journal News publisher Janet Hasson, the move was in response to recently passed gun legislation in New York, which includes a provision prohibiting the release of information about gun owners, and not because of the firestorm of criticism the paper's received since publishing the list four weeks ago. From publisher Janet Hasson's statement on the Journal News' website:
"Today The Journal News has removed the permit data from lohud.com. Our decision to do so is not a concession to critics that no value was served by the posting of the map in the first place. On the contrary, we've heard from too many grateful community members to consider our decision to post information contained in the public record to have been a mistake. Nor is our decision made because we were intimidated by those who threatened the safety of our staffers. We know our business is a controversial one, and we do not cower."
http://gawker.com/5977304/the-journal-news-took-down-its-controversial-map-of-gun-owners
fire arms do not kill anyone actually. The person holding it does. Just to clear that up for you. thanks
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
more children are killed by firearms each year than by the people listed in certain databases who have already fully paid their debt to society yet will continue to be persecuted by the public, by the media and by the government, forever.
... despite recidivism rates for sex offenders being lower than for other categories of crime and recidivism rates for child molesters being lower than for sex offenders in general. It does call into question the need for maintaining these registries.
While it's an interesting discussion regarding whether this information should be available via FOIA or subsequently published, what is lost is that the registration list shouldn't even exist.
The purpose of registration, especially when combined with making the data public, serves to inhibit and, therefore, infringe on the fundamental right.
You may not agree with the right but there is no valid governmental reason to require registration of something for which one has a fundamental right. I live in a state that does not have registration and most states do not. It's fascinating to me that most people just assume that guns should be registered and, therefore, the discussion is on publication of the information rather than on registration itself.
People who commit a crime think they'll get away with it. They aren't agreeing to get caught, much less give up their rights.
If you can't hold it and step behind some bushes to pee and get spotted by a ten year old kid, you can be convicted of indecent exposure in most states. That can get you placed on a sex offender list for life in many states (some, like Colorado, came to their senses and created a second crime for non-sexual exposure which is neither a sex crime nor a felony). Once you're on the sex offender list, your name, address and photo would be made available to anyone who cares to look for registered sex offenders in the area you live in. In some places, you'd no longer be able to live within 1000 feet of a school or day care center. You'd have to tell anyone you were trying to rent from that you were a convicted sex offender, too, so most places wouldn't take you as a tenant. It's also a felony, so you'd no longer be able to own a gun or vote. You'd be required to admit that you were convicted sex offender on job applications, which would severely limit your employment opportunities. The list of long-term affects on your life goes on and on, but basically you're screwed for life.
Cruel and unusual is a fitting description.
Do you really think that you would have been agreeing to all that when you decided to step behind a bush and take a leak? Of course not. You'd have thought you wouldn't be seen and it would be okay.
When someone commits a crime, that means they break law(s) set by society. Civilized Western countries (in this case, as with most cases related to criminal law being even remotely reasonable, US is not on the list) tend to have a legal process which causes loss of ability to inflict any more crimes of this nature for a period during which they try to rehabilitate that citizen so he will not commit those crimes when his freedom to act is restored.
This should not cause loss of any rights not directly related to the said crime. They are still humans, and still citizens of the country with all the legal protection granted to all other citizens.
US has a strong history of frontier justice due to its very recent colonial past, which causes it to have a very skewed "punish for vengeance, not prevention and rehabilitation" culture largely absent in most of the world. Restriction of rights not related to crime is VENGEANCE, not REHABILITATION. In vast majority of the Western world, avenging crimes by society is viewed as uncivilized brutality. A great example of this is Norway and its handling of Breivik.
It's one of the major cultural clashes that US tends to have with other countries, and one of the main reasons why prison populations in US are completely different from those in rest of Western world.
It's not just highly unusual, it's pretty much unique to US. There are some very poor former colonies with similar laws, but these tend to not have most of the rights for their citizens in the first place.
"fire arms do not kill anyone actually. The person holding it does."
that is the most bollox of arguments because if the person held a banana instead of a gun, the banana wouldn;t have killed anyone
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The unintended consequences of sex-offender registration and publication continue to ripple throughout society.
It's easy to think, I'm not a pedophile or rapist so I never have to worry about it. On the other hand, have you ever urinated in a public area such as a golf course.
It used to be a citation for urinating in public. Now it's indecent exposure and, upon conviction, requires registration as a sex offender which not only causes your name to be published but restricts where you can live. Some states (http://www.shazamlaw.com/Articles/Colorado-Bill-Aims-to-Stop-Sex-Offender-Registration-for-Public-Urination-Streaking.shtml) are working on changing their laws.
I play golf and I've had to warn fellow players to be quite careful that they not be seen while taking a break else risk becoming registered sex offenders.
"By gun owner logic or any other logic, that list does make it safer for gun owners. Its their non-gun owning neighbors who need to worry."
no, the criminal will just shoot first and ask questions later of a gun owner.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
We are not denying them their rights, when they commit a crime and break the law, they are voluntarily giving up their rights.
Congratulations, you walked into the minefield! Here's the thing. Our founding documents talk about inalienable human rights and you want to deprive people of those. You can't do that without dehumanizing them, because these rights are supposed to be inherent to humans. Incidentally, that's why foreigners have first amendment rights in the USA — our rights are human rights. And (at risk of flamebaiting) that's why the battle for gay rights is so critical — they're being relegated to subhuman status by being denied rights which the rest of us take for granted today.
So, either rights are human rights, which means that we all get them even if we commit a crime, or rights are just on paper, which is increasingly how people seem to want it to work in this country. If you're not guaranteed a right in the constitution, you're guaranteed to have an uphill battle if TPTB conflict with your desire to exercise it. The right to keep and bear arms is the right to reasonable self-defense against criminals and yes, even tyranny. Ask people whose people have been forcibly disarmed how they feel about gun control. They have the most valid opinion. They will tell you that it was not a good thing.
So it doesn't matter if we're talking about the right to free expression, or the right to meaningful self-defense, or the right to due process — if you're denying people these supposedly "human" rights, then you're potentially denying them to yourself on basically any basis. These rights are meant to be inalienable — I do not think you know what that word means.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are those to which the removal of your personal freedoms would be a panacea. They come first for the removal of the most obnoxious, and after awhile it becomes clear that obnoxious is in the eye of the beholder. I will cite the removal of civil liberties for sexual offenders and other felons discussed here previously. Do you know the lifetime sexual offender registration list contains the names of men who biblically knew 15 yr old girls when they were 18? The category for Felon itself has been broadened to such a degree that it could include many of us had the dice landed differently.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Agreed, no one said one did. but if you dont think someone could kill you with a banana if they REALLY wanted to you need to think a little harder. point being, if someone wants to kill you, they are going to try to do so.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Will there be an interactive map for mental evaluation results?
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe you should also look at movies from this time, where the story takes place in countries where only the government (police and military) have guns, like Germany, the Netherlands, ... .
Oh wait, it isn't a bad thing to live there nowadays, so you can't use that as an argument for your case.
Nevermind, stay in you close minded world, where everywhere where gun control is in place the thugs rule the world.
You are a pacifist only because there are others willing to use violence to keep the peace. Without them, you would continually be on the move in search of safe neighborhoods as crime areas expand.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wt1Zy_ASNyA
Look what happens when journalists who are anti-gun are approached with the idea of having a Gun Free Home sign posted. Some have armed guards. See any hypocracy?
In my limited understanding (I've never bothered to look it up) all felons lose the right to own firearms, and to vote.
But after a few years, felons can get their rights restored through a judicial process. Good luck ever getting your name off the sex offender registry.
Keep in mind also, that many of the registered sex offenders committed such heinous acts as having sex with their girlfriend when they were both under age, or taking a leak in what they thought was an empty field, with no one to see. It's also worth considering that many of those on the registries are actually innocent. The consequences of the major sex crimes are so terrifying that DAs find it very easy to plea bargain for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor. Given the choice between pleading to a misdemeanor you didn't commit, with a fine and community service, and going to trial for a felony that would put you in jail for the rest of your life, what would you -- as an innocent man who didn't commit any of the crimes -- choose to do? Of course, only later do you discover that your plea bargain has put you on the registry for life... and with all of the details of your supposed crime kindly omitted to protect your privacy.
This stuff really happens. A lot. The system is badly broken.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Make sure this never happens again:
Alarm permits have to be filed with the police department too. So just get a list of all of the names and addresses of everybody in New York and then filter out anybody who has a gun or has an alarm. Publish the map and call it "defenseless homes" and be clear that it's only possible to make such a map because citizens privacy isn't respected with respect to FOI requests. See how much people like that out there and then watch the political fireworks.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Or Vermont. Vermont has possibly the highest rate of gun ownership in the USA. Vermont has the least restrictive gun laws in the USA. You don't need a permit to buy a gun, own a gun, use a gun or even for concealed carry. It's written right into the Vermont Constitution even more strongly than the 2nd Amendment just to make this clear.
Yet, despite all those gun toting Vermonters we also have the lowest absolute and lowest per capita rates of gun crimes and gun violence here in Vermont.
Meanwhile, the states that have the highly restrictive gun laws have the highest rates of gun crimes.
Ergo, restrictive gun laws obviously cause gun crimes.
Now, you can argue that because Vermont is so rural and there are so few people we have more space to get away from each other and not get on each other's nerves. That right there is not an argument for gun laws but rather an argument that the problem is cities and people.
Obviously what we need are laws that outlaw cities.
Apparently not researching facts continues to be the method of choice around here.
Germany (pop. 81.7M) estimates for civilian guns held is around 25,000,000 guns. http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/germany
Netherlands (pop. 16.9M) estimates for civilian guns is around 510,000 guns. http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/netherlands
While not at U.S. ratios, data certainly doesn't reflect the bullshit you're passing.
you are deluded, the same thing is true in socialist and communist states. hmmm, maybe those "capitalist" pressures are universal.
currently in my State, registration and background checks for Rifles don't exist, they do for Hand Guns.
You must not live in the US then, dealers must perform a background check on all cartridge weapons, only black powder guns and airguns are exempt from that requirement.
I can go down town to a Pawn shop, walk in and walk out with a crippled AK47, come home and order some parts...and have a fully automatic weapon to mow down some folks I'm pissed at.
Well that and don't forget your visit to the machine shop, also don't be surprised when the atf shows up at the same time as your parts. They tend to keep a close watch on parts that can be used to make an automatic weapon. Have them shipped to a name and address not on the list of registered machine guns and they take an interest in it.
I am under firm belief the second amendment pertains to Law enforcement and Military usage.
The second amendment applies to the people and the militia, look it up it uses both of those terms, it doesn't say military or law enforcement in it. Further the guys who came up with the second amendment... said things like
"The right of the people to keep and bear... arms shall not infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." - James Madison, I Annuals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).
(emphasis mine)
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public servants." - George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 425-426.
Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." - Tench Coxe
"... the British Parliament was advised, by an artful man to disarm the people that was the best and most effective way to enslave the people - but they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." - George Mason, Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778.
If you look at it they intended for the second amendment to apply to everyone EXCEPT for law enforcement and the military. Law Enforcement officers and military members are not allowed to bear whatever arms they please and are required to bear arms in accordance with the respective policies governing use of arms. The United States Supreme Court even went so far as to disconnect the militia requirement (and if you read the history of the second amendment this makes sense that clause was originally there to protect people who had religious reasons for refusing to bear arms and ended up neutered to prevent abuses of that clause by the government to disarm its people) the Supreme court had this to say in Heller V. DC
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
and on the militia clause
The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms
Unlike popular myth, Nazi Germany, as well as Saddam's Iraq, actively promoted gun ownership by their citizens.
news for you, your first amendment rights have limitations as to hate speech, inciting riots and crime, *privacy* and *harassment*.
Yeah sure. "Guns don't kill people, gun owners do". And that makes gun owners non-dangerous how exactly?
Really? Such as say...publishing a list of gun owners?
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
You Must Like Capital Letters.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
He would not know her new address which is the problem BTW in the UK there are a couple of ex BT employees doing serious time who found the address of the parents of a Criminal - Subsequently both of the parents where killed by a hitman.
How long till some on in this group sue the news paper for the costs of relocation - a nice little earner for the legal profession.
Switzerland has the lowest violent crime and gun related crime in the entire world, they have been number 1 for decades. Yet the twist is in Switzerland citizens are required to own a gun. All citizens are given a gun, ammunition and have annual training.
Just FYI Switzerland has strict controls on guns and ammunition, the ammunition comes in cans and is accounted for regularly if the can is opened that's a fine there, any bullets missing must be accounted for. If there's a shooting and your ammunition is missing (they search everyone in the vicinity after a shooting) then you're automatically a suspect. The NRA does not endorse Switzerland style gun controls. But you're right with the last bit, the reason Switzerland has low violent crime has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with how they take care of their people. Fortunately if you look at the world violent crime rates they're dropping everywhere (well everywhere except Australia) so maybe some day we'll all be as low as Switzerland is now and we can all strive to attain Switzerland's new ultra low violent crime rate consisting of drive by resurrections!
In seriousousness, do you have a source for this? I see the popular myth spread all over my social news feeds but my WWII era history is rusty so I would love to have some sort of something to go back to them with proving your statement!
Scarlet Letters, Red Crosses, Peeing On a Tree... humans are no different from dogs when it comes to trying to take ownership of things that are not theirs. I'm sure there's a psychological reason for doing it (power? control?) but it's all the same. If they can publicly 'shame' you to drum up fear, they think others will fall in line.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Hold the adult pool owners fully responsible for fencing in and locking up the access to their unattended pool, no excuses, or do not have a pool.
How about hold the gun owner responsible for locking access of their unattended firearm? Oh wait, that is already the case.
Lawful gun owner that has a permit are responsible already. Fuck off.
A permit is just not enough obviously. Make the laws stricter and penalties much much harsher for irresponsible gun owners. And if gun owners don't/can't/won't abide by the stricter gun control laws, then they MUST turn them in for smelting. We will have to go through several years of news stories about the latest asshole survivalist mental patient who holed up in his apartment and died in a shootout with SWAT teams. After a few years of full on violence by the assholes who should never have had access to guns to begin with, it will be a rare news story of a maniac with a gun killing innocent people/kids that we have to hear about. "F" me??! "F" you! Find yourself a different 'hobby' for yourself, fool. One that doesn't involve harming living things. I suggest you take up tennis. It's healthy for you, and the odds of harming/killing someone with an errant tennis 'shot' are nil!
Scarlet Letters, Red Crosses, Peeing On a Tree... humans are no different from dogs when it comes to trying to take ownership of things that are not theirs. I'm sure there's a psychological reason for doing it (power? control?) but it's all the same. If they can publicly 'shame' you to drum up fear, they think others will fall in line.
And it's true to some extent. I think people probably are deterred from committing sex crimes (sometimes) by the fear of such sanctioned social punishments.
My mother was born in Munich Germany in 1929 and grew up during Hitler's rise to power. Her father, a prosperous grocer and restauranteur, owned a prized Italian over-under shotgun and a Belgian Nagant revolver. In 1939 the police came and confiscated his guns. In 1940 they came again, and at gunpoint, confiscated his giant beer tents and all his restaurant equipment that he'd used in the Oktoberfests, saying that the army needed them more than he did. In 1945 they came again to forcefully conscript him, at age 50, into the army. A few days later, American forces rolled into Munich. My dad was a 19 year old American GI in those forces.
Both my parents are gone now, but my mother was always adamant to never ever allow the government to take my guns, and my father taught me well how to handle and respect firearms.
I agree with him. Most libertarians would too I think, though I am not one.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Live in Westchester Cty, NY. Downloaded the files from dropbox. Searched my community. Found that an electrician and a plumber we have used have registered handguns. Don't like handguns. Will no longer give business to those two. My right to know, and to set criteria for my patronage.
Always more stricter? When doest it stop? When your fantasy of hiding all firearm is fulfilled of course. If you got a problem with mental health then discuss mental health issues.
And for the record I don't own nor ever used any firearms. I am just stick of that sterile debate that only serve as an excuse to avoid debating the real problems. Fuck off
Enough with your "f yous", angry boy. You know when it "doest"stop-eths? When no one in this country has been killed by an angry person with a too easily accesible firearm. And it's going to take a longish time to implement the needed stricter firearm laws/penalties. 30 years or so ago drunk driving wasn't a crime, todays laws mean you risk losing everything if you're found to be driving while under the influence of substances (prescripton/illegal drugs and alcohol (also a 'drug'). And those laws are good ones that have prevented preventable deaths/injuries from happening. Now it's time for our society to take another "big adult step" in its evolution by creating the means needed to begin reducing such easy access to killing machines.
FYI, I am a former gun owner. My thinking about guns has evolved over the years. Time to realize that imurders by gun have gotten way out of hand, and it's a problem that needs to get fixed, asap! So some gun owners who (for whatever reason) are found to not deserve the 'priveledge' (it should not be a right, but a priveledge, imo) of owning a gun and aren't allowed to own a killing weapon anymore. I will applaud that as loudly as I applaud it every time a drunk/addict has their driving priviledges taken from them, and that's loud applause from me.
You wouldn't happen to fall into one of those categories, would you?
I've seen a lot of this on Slashdot lately. So far it's mostly been from anonymous cowards like you without the courage of your convictions (I use this phrase a lot lately, I admit, but I like it a lot) so I'm not that worried about it — but I am a little worried to see it pass so easily. In any case, no, I have never been to prison or even jail for any offense, nor have I ever abused a firearm. I am not mentally ill nor am I any kind of sex offender.
To answer your actual question: If we can't trust people with a gun then we can't trust them in the general population.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can someone make a population density map to compare to this gun density?
I have a strange feeling they may be almost identical in spread.
So start proposing a repeal of the Second Amendment. Be honest.
The founding fathers never envisioned semi-automatic weapons. Musket rifles were inaccurate and single shot weapons that took an expert at least a full minute to reload. How about you come to realize that the 1700's are long over, and arguments that were valid at that time are not applicable to modern weaponry and modern society?
It's there so that you have ability to take down a tyrannical government
The second amendment says nothing about that.
Would the military troops attack US citizens inside the country? I say they very well may.
Being as you don't know squat about the constitution, or anything else that is politically relevant or important in the US, it is not surprising that you are also not knowledgeable on the US military, their power structure, their expenditures, or their investment of resources.
And that is precisely why there can be no limit on what type of weapons the civilians must be able to purchase if they can afford it.
Naturally, you again take on the capitalist / neo-fascist perspective of "if they can afford it". Equality matters not to you. Neither does opportunity or true liberty. You worship at the altar of the mighty dollar and your lord is a retiring congressman from Texas.
Again the summary is inaccurate as was the last article on this topic. All the state has is a list of handgun license holders not gun owners. Though there is a high correlation between the two there are license holders who do not own their own guns and/or do not store them at home. What can't people understand the simple difference between ownership and licensing?
Are you suggesting that when you were a fetus that you were'nt a viable form of life? One that a good society would demand rights to it life, even though you were to immature still to be able to protect yourself? Just wonderin'...
This could be the first post from you that I completely agree with.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I thought (the argument was) that we needed guns to protect ourselves against things like censorship? So why are the gun owners so concerned about dissemination of a list of gun owners? And if widespread gun ownership is a deterrent to violent crime (as gun advocates suggest), wouldn't it make you even safer if everyone knew you had a gun? Add these questions to the other holes in their arguments, as well as crime statistics involving legal and illegal gun use, and I'm quickly becoming pretty anti-gun. I'm still waiting for anything that can prove more guns in the hands of citizens means less crime, while I absolutely know that the more guns we have the easier it is for criminals to buy or steal them, and there is more opportunity for them to be diverted to black market channels.
Stricter laws and punishments are not the solution to gun crimes, either. Every criminal who uses a gun already knows what they are doing is illegal and punishable by prison. The key is that they think they have a good chance of getting away with it. Even improving policing by increasing the police force and giving them better crime solving tools has limits. We need more and comprehensive prevention methods to keep people from becoming desperate and wanting to do illegal things, and we need to make it harder for them to get guns. Guns in places like schools won't prevent violence in schools either, they will just lead to shoot-outs. Can you picture the backlash when we see the first cases of students getting their hands on teachers' guns? That's a mess we surely don't need.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
People who commit crimes (I'm talking about obvious crimes, not tripping over stupidities in the criminal code) understand that they are risking being caught, and that the likely result of being caught is the loss of their freedom or worse. They act voluntarily, understanding the risk. To say "They aren't agreeing to get caught, much less give up their rights." is to say their stepping outside of reality in their mental processes is something we should give serious legal attention to. It's not.
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A person has human rights because of his presumed properties as a human being, those properties being (among others) being an animal and having a rational faculty. Furthermore, rights are related in degree to the possession of human properties. The right to vote is not granted to those too young to use it rationally. The right to drive a car (yes it's a right, government claims to the contrary notwithstanding) is not granted to people incapable of driving safely (the ability to drive safely being a property of trained human adults.)
A person who (for instance) murders an innocent has lost some portion of his humanity, and when that loss has been proven the state is justified in applying the penalties that apply to the crime, that would violate his rights as a human being, because to the degree that his crime indicates he has not acted as a proper human, he loses the portion of his rights associated with those aspects of humanity he lacks.
To conclude: yes, there are inalienable human rights, and someone who loses his humanity loses his human rights.
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The founders wanted people to have firearms so that people could kill tyrants. Semi-automatic weapons fill that role admirably, and the reasoning is as good and as applicable today as is was then, and will remain so forever.
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Gee, you've just told him he can't farm vegetables.
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It seems the founding fathers wanted to put private citizens on a relatively even playing field with the government -- understandable considering they had just fought long and hard to free themselves from tyranny. Isn't the risk government oppression still very much a relevant issue today?
I don't get the technology argument at all. Technology certainly has advanced, but if everyone is armed with the latest technology, there's no relative difference from everyone being armed with muskets. Besides, it's simply not true that the only weapons in the late 18th century were single shot. The Girandoni Air Rifle, actively used in the Austrian army for over a decade at the time the Second Amendment was adopted, had a 22 round magazine that could be emptied in about a minute. It even had usable accuracy (could place ten shots into a group the size of a quarter at 50 feet).
So, since some people choose to disobey the law, what we should do is make more laws restricting what people who do obey the law can do? Hmm, sounds kind of dumb. How about instead of that, we just go after people who choose to disobey the law?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The gun-owners will be safer when they are at home because the criminals know they have a gun. The gun-owners will be more likely to get broken into when they are not home because the criminals know they have a gun.Of course, they probably have it in a gun safe, but meanwhile the criminal will go ahead and steal whatever isn't nailed down and can be pawned for pennies on the dollar.
The non-gun owner houses will still be fair game at any time of day to the criminals, although they still prefer to be non-confrontational and just break in when they know nobody is home.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Except, of course, for the Jews.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
well if you are going to get technical about it.... the bullet ripping through the victims flesh, bone and organs followed by the ensuing loss of blood kills them.
the idea that the assailant may simply try a different weapon if he doesn't have access to a gun doesn't really hold much water. a gun leaves a victim with essentially no possibility to resist death. if the attacker were using a hammer or knife or banana, the victim would have a much better chance of survival.
in short, yes, guns kill people. the fact that you fail to accept this does not mean it's not true.
Except for those times when the person holding isn't in control. You know the five year old who thinks its like a toy and shoots his friend in the face or the drunk teens messing around in the back yard. You know those people - the "accidental" deaths. I'd say those deaths were caused by guns, not people.
Guns are lethal. Much like toxic chemicals, poisons, many drugs, biological substances like virii and bacteria cultures and all the other things out there that can kill others through basic negligence and irresponsibility. There is a whole list of stuff we don't let average people own - because they can't be responsible enough to own them. They don't have the environment, equipment or training to use them safely. Guns should be on that list too.
Would you want your neighbor to have Anthrax in a fridge in the garage? He has a piece of paper saying he's allowed to. He just wants it in case he needs to use it to protect his family against bio-oppression from the government. In the meanwhile he enjoys growing new strains and trying to create treatments for them, competitively of course (it's a sport really). The fridge is on a GFCI plug so it's safe and he's got a padlock on the door.
Yeah that sounds a little insane right? Well that's what private gun ownership sounds like to me. You want sport, rent one at a club or range. You want self protection, get a taser or a dog (plenty of non-lethal options). You feel like you need a gun to protect freedom, join the military (unless you're afraid you'll be brainwashed and used to oppress your own neighbors of course).
Private citizens with guns make the world more dangerous by adding more chances for accidents and mistakes to happen. Private citizens can't be responsible. They just don't have the time or resources to properly own and maintain guns. They have messy lives filled with emotion and as their livelihood does not depend on treating guns with the respect they deserve, things happen. Things happen and people die.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The 2nd amendment guarantees the right to bear arms because "a well-regulated militia is necessary". This has nothing to do with the National Guard. Well-regulated means well-trained: in order that there be a body of well-trained men available to form militias, people can have guns. The clear implication is that the guns that people can (should?) have are whatever is standard issue for an infantryman. In modern terms, a semi-automatic rifle will do just fine.
In Heller, the Supreme Court affirmed that the traditional and natural right to self-defense is encompassed by the second amendment. In other words, it's not just about militias, or hunting - you explicitly have the right to defend yourself with a gun.
There's no constitutional problem with reasonable regulation - banning full-auto, surface-to-air missiles and nukes isn't a problem, and there are certainly gun regulations that can be constitutional. But "reasonable regulation" can't eliminate weapons that it is reasonable to want for self-defense. So what's reasonable? It's not reasonable to expect one man to have to defend against an army, but home invasions commonly involve two or three criminals. So what is reasonable for a person to have to defend against three large, aggressive men? It might take multiple hits to stop an aggressor (cf. the recent case of a woman hitting a single assailant 5 times. He escaped and drove off in his car.), and the victim's aim is likely to be poor with a system full of adrenaline. It's far from clear to me that 10 rounds is adequate.
And then we come to the kicker. By construction, any weapon suitable for a (scared, panicking) person to defend him or herself against three assailants with is equally suitable for executing 10 or so innocents in cold blood. So if you allow people to own an adequate defensive weapon, then by construction they own equipment suitable for a mass killing.
[For what it's worth, my personal choice for a home defense weapon would be a carbine in .40 S&W or .45 ACP, with as big a magazine as I could manage. (Handguns aren't accurate enough. The extra lever arm of a long gun is a huge benefit, specially to the non-expert, and a short carbine is a reasonable compromise between lever arm and maneuverability indoors. The recoil on a pistol-caliber carbine is low enough that my wife will fire more than one shot. A shotgun wouldn't be a bad choice, but it's not my preference. I could make a reasonable case for an FN PS-90, if you let me have the 50-round magazine.)]
And having a gun can mean the difference in an encounter with criminals. They can also be taken/wrested away from the (now) victim and used against them. That hunting family I knew, some months after a kick in attempted robbery (where the wife & mother of 3 sons was alone and kept a shotgun aimed at the perp until he left), one day a son calls the work office answering machine where we are eating lunch. His mom had heard someone upstairs and was shooting up there (it was her son), he's asking us to call her downstairs and convince her that it's just him upstairs. She was having some type of psychotic episode that was a direct result from her encounter several months earlier.
The real problem now is how do you determine who is a responsible owner? How can you confirm that they consistently secure their weapons properly? Do waiting and cooling off periods need to be lengthened? No easy answers. Now in the news is the 15 year old New Mexico kid who killed is family members, and they'll be another equally horrible gun violence story again in a few days from now, I'm sure. It's the ease of access that neds to be more locked down.
Oh, and just to correct the errors... muskets during the revolution were almost exclusively not rifles. And an expert musketeer could load and fire on the order of three balls in a minute.
And this notion that somehow a modern society is somehow immune to being abused by its government is ludicrous. The complacency of it blinding. Self-protection against a tyrannical government is as valid today as it was during the revolution. More pertinent, many would say...
Okay, still, if you had a musket pistol and didn't kill on your first shot I have a fighting chance then to get away or disarm you. When a person can enter a theater or classroom and wipe out most people in it, that is a major concern/problem that needs to get addressed/fixed. Mind you, I don't claim to have the easy solution to this dilemma.
We attempt to keep child molesters away from children.
We prohibit firearm offenders from possessing firearms. (This is actually more strictly regulated and controlled than keeping molesters away from children.)
Did you have a point?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
We're not talking about the broader scale of one nation attacking another nation here. We're talking about neighborhoods. At the neighborhood level, safe communities very rarely meet aggressive, violent people. Therefore, people living in safe communities rarely feel the need to own firearms for personal protection.
I disagree with that. I live in a very well-to-do neighborhood (just like the one I live before I moved to where my family and I are now.) The most well-to-do that I can afford. Gated, with alarms and everything. Guess what? I own a gun. Even with electronic gates and being surrounded by also afluent neighborhood, things happen.
A couple of week ago, our community manager had a police officer coming for a home security measure lecture at our community playhouse (one of the perks of living in a well-to-do neighborhood is to have the $$$ to sponsor such events) because of recent break-ins.
The idea that living in a well-to-do neighborhoods insulate you from crime shows a missunderstanding of the nature of crime. Granted, you will be insulated from, say, gang or drug related violence and street robberies. But it does not insulate you from home robberies. Robbers do not go to poor neighborhoods to commit home robberies. They target well-to-do neighborhoods sufficiently away from their home bases (crossing county lines at times.)
Gun ownership for the purpose of home defense is not targetted for the type of violence you see in poor neighborhoods. They are meant for the time of home invasion or robbery that you are statistically at risk of experiencing in your neighborhood (or in any neighborhood.)
You need to educate yourself well on the nature and statistics of crime robbery.
If I were buying a house, I would see high gun ownership in a neighborhood as a very bad sign, because it means that a large percentage of the people live in constant fear for their lives.
Or maybe because they are into sports shooting? If you find generalizations a good way to make sense out of the world, knock yourself out, so long as you recognized that you do not necessarily have a valid opinion, but a superficial, subjective bias.
This is also the same argument that people make about neighborhoods with lots of police presence - it must be a bad neighborhood. They never stop to consider that well-to-do neighborhoods actually run citizen and police watch programs and other programs that typically increase police presence. You cannot take a peek at complex phenomena and derive overly simplistic conclusions off them. Well, you can, but you shouldn't.
Again using myself as an example. I own a gun. I don't feel fear for my life. I shoot it at the range, what, once every other year. It is locked. I never carried it with me outside of my house other than to go to the range (and probably never will.)
I similary have a lot of colleages, both conservative and liberal leaning that own a gun. One of my wive's best friends, her husband goes hunting regularly, and he (and her) are some of the most easy-going, no-worries couples ever.
I've seen an increase in gun purchasing from among my colleages, and I don't see them doing so because of fear that we are descending into a Mad-Max world, but more as a means to ensure they can exercise their right to own a gun (should they ever want to) before it becomes more expensive.
True that there are a lof of wackos who think they are survivalist warriors and humanity's (read right-fringe lunatic America) last chance before shit hits the fan.
But as vociferous as they are, they do not represent the enormous gamut of political and personal opinions represented by a very politically diversed sector of gun owners.
I won't address the other sentences and statements in your post because I believe my post above is sufficient to answer them.
And I would say those deaths are a cause of neglect, I dont blame the tool for the fact that a parent does not know how to take care of their own children.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Not even going to get into the fact that you have no faith in the individual but put all your trust into the government. The same government that spys on us and our online communications "for the good" the same government that sold guns to criminal cartels in mexico. but sure blame the avg american because some people cant be trusted.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'll just leave this here for you: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#accidents
In my limited understanding (I've never bothered to look it up) all felons lose the right to own firearms, and to vote. I think these are sensible precautions
Losing the right to own firearms is a reasonable precaution, based purely on available statistics - vast majority of violent crimes are committed by people with past criminal convictions.
Losing the right to vote is not, however. It's not dangerous to the society, unless you somehow get into a situation where a significant proportion of your society are criminals (which indicates a problem with your laws). On the other hand, it enables abuse of the system, since it allows the state to disenfranchise people simply by enacting new laws, which require a simple majority in the parliament to pass. In other words, it means that, in a roundabout way 51% can deny the right to vote to the other 49% if they set their mind to it. And we've already seen that in effect with the War on Drugs - it's a stupid policy, and we're slowly seeing it overturned, but how much faster would it happen if hundreds of thousands of recreational users of soft drugs didn't end up with criminal records?
Of course. They were not considered citizens, right?
BTW, the page you link to shows a change in gun permit law enacted in 1938 (superseding the non-Nazi law of 1928) makes rifles and ammunition for rifles unregulated, lowers the age of the handgun permit from 20 to 18, makes this permit last for 3 years instead of 1, and ... makes gun ownership illegal for Jews. So, except for the Jew thing, (but don't forget about the muslims) this looks more like an action from the NRA than from anyone else.
And that's the sticky wicket, isn't it?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano