Just for curiosity's sake, where is "around here?"
Specific to this case, GZ was carrying his gun concealed, so how would TM have been justified in beating him to death over a gun he didn't know existed?
Additionally, self defense laws in the US almost never make mention of a type of weapon. The type of weapons used by the aggressor and the defender don't matter, only threats of and reactions to great bodily harm. If the whole GZ/TM story had happened with only fists, it would have been no different in the eyes of the law.
Once you understand that the public education system is not concerned with public education, then decisions like this start to make more sense. Public schools have become a day care to relieve bad parents, a welfare program for otherwise unemployable people masquerading as "teachers," an efficient way to grow bureaucracy, and a tool for channeling government money to cronies. In that light, burning another $30,000,000 on a "solution" that will only further worsen the outcomes of public education makes complete sense.
You missed the mark on two related points, but your heart is in the right place:
First, the NRA is monstrously powerful not because of the gun industry support. I mean, they give a lot of money to the NRA, but it pales in comparison to the donations from 5,000,000+ members. Secondly, it's not the tech industry that needs to take note, it's people who need to take note.
Look at the SOPA internet blackout. It worked, not because some of the major tech companies grudgingly signed on late in the planning stage in order to not lose face, but because of all the people who pulled down their individual websites, wrote congresspeople, and got involved. People did that. Not the tech companies.
So yes, much can be learned from the NRA, and the first lesson is that it's the people who have the power, not the companies. An EFF with 5 million active supporters would be as much of a beast in Washington as the NRA is.
I know you think you're being a clever troll, but I'll dignify your comment with a response anyway:
It is understood that in America, we have four boxes for the defense of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are to be used in exactly that order.
The soap box is protected by our First Amendment. We can speak, organize, meet, protest, write, etc. The government has been attacking the first amendment at a slow pace since Bush Jr ("Protest zones"), and picked up the pace more recently, ie, AP phone taps.
The ballot box is our right to vote out bad politicians, vote in the ones we hope will be better, recall ones who have betrayed their promises, donate to and support politicians, and run for office ourselves.
The jury box is two-side: it is the rights we have when accused of a crime, and the rights we have as jurors. It is protected by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments. As defendants we are protected against unreasonable search and seizure, self-incrimination, cruel or unusual punishment, and we have the right to a jury trial. As jurors, we have the right to nullify unconstitutional and unjust laws. These rights have been under attack in America for over a century, and the offensive has kicked into overdrive since the start of the War on Terror.
The cartridge box is our right to own modern weaponry, and is protected by the Second Amendment. The government has been attacking it with increased fervor since 1934. It constitutes the last defense of liberty, and any dictator knows you can't enslave people who are armed, thus the recent push to bar the ownership of modern weapons.
To directly answer your question: No, now is not the time when we're supposed to organize and overthrow the government, not by a long shot. Now is the time to do what we're doing here: talk, get mad, organize, protest, write letters, etc. Let your representatives know you're angry. When the 2014 elections start ramping up, support politicians you think will support what you support. Oppose politicians who went along with this mess. If you have the opportunity, sit on a jury and nullify the malicious prosecution of a law that has no business being a law. And if you like, if you're of the mind that one day in the future the first three boxes will be exhausted, buy a gun, or buy some more ammo, or take a training class.
All these things are your right as a human, but rights come with responsibilities. One of those is working as hard as you can through the current system, to solve your problems without bloodshed.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Not to be too overly ironic, but rape isn't a sexy crime. Legislators and prosecutors need to battle sexy crimes to get reelected, which is why we see the juxtaposition we have in this story. In some states (CA, MA, NJ) violation of their gun laws, even absent hurting anyone, will get your a longer sentence than rape will.
If you're one of the advocates of continually increasing the size and power of government, then congratulations! We're reaping what you've sown.
When we let the government grow and grow and grow with no limits, no accountability, borrow uncontrollably, print money uncontrollably, raise the debt ceiling time after time, and continually increase the list of things we expect them to do for us, we end up with this: agencies so huge and powerful that they're always watching you.
A government big enough to give you anything, is big enough to take everything. Remember this the next time you're clamoring for another giant government bureaucracy that you hope will allow you to shed some more of your personal responsibility.
The statistics on this issue are rather inconclusive. They're all self reported, to start with. They measure households with guns, not people with guns, and the average size of a US household continues to drop (meaning gun ownership by person could be level or increasing, and the statistic would still says that ownership by household was going down). Several highly respected polling companies show results that are at odds with each other. Even NPR, which typically marches in lock step with the gun control agenda ran a story a few months ago about the discrepancies in polls of gun ownership.
How about you run away from the thugs instead of towards your car?
Because I have a limp, old injury, I'm overweight, I'm in a wheelchair, or the younger assailants just flat run faster than I do. Retreat is not always an option, especially for the young, old, infirm, and for some females and a few males.
Oh wait, you get all your facts from TV.
A) the constitution, by design, can be changed.
Get 2/3 of both houses of congress, and 3/4 of state legislatures, and strike the second amendment then. Go ahead. Small changes to gun law couldn't pass in a Democrat controlled senate with a president spending a huge amount of capital to push it. I'm sure you'll have no trouble amending the constitution to outlaw guns.
b) The thought they were important enough for a well regulated militia. Why you people can't read the whole god damn sentence is beyond me.
I did read the whole sentence. It ends with, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I would challenge you to not only read the amendment yourself, but read the rest of the bill of rights, and see what other rights the founding fathers thought that the "people" possessed inalienably. Ask yourself if you believe those other rights of people are associated with membership in an organized group, or were individual rights. It's all or nothing. Either "people's" rights are individual or collective contingent on some membership. (To save you the time, the first, fourth, ninth, and tenth amendments all refer to these "people.") The writers of the constitution were lawyers and lawmakers; they knew words had meanings, and that you must use them consistently.
Hint: is was becasue we couldn't afford a standing army. EOL. It's very clear in all the letters and writing. If we could have afforded a standing army, that bit wouldn't be there.
I also like how in your scenario the thugs didn't have a gun. You leave you office building, a thug shoots you, takes your wallet and gun, and you die with the comforting feeling they a murder has your gun.
No one who carries a gun believes it's a magical talisman against harm. It levels the playing field, and gives you more options that you have without one.
You can make a gun the just plain works AND hove a bio metric ID system. The fact that you cna't think of anything just another indicator of your sub par thinking skills.
Several posters on this topic have explained why it wont work. And please don't resort to insults.
It's interesting how rampant gun fan's paranoia is. This story isn't about forcing everyone to have the technology, it is about a company trying to get funding to develop the viable first version. It's like you won't even entertain the idea that the technology could exist or be trialled. Maybe some people might even want to buy it if it works. Is that so terrible, so frightening?
This is a long read, but the fact that you used the words "gun fan" and not "gun nut" or "gun crazy" makes me think you're not totally lost. It sums up why we gun owners and second amendment defenders don't trust even the pursuit of this technology. We know from history that it WILL be used as another attempt for gun control.
I have a question for the sceptics like you. If this technology were extremely cheap and reliable would you still object to it? If the answer is "no" why do you object to spending money on development.
Yes. Being "extremely reliable" is not good enough for a gun you would use for self defense. If the smart tech is anything but 100% reliable, then it reduces the overall reliability, and I wont use it.
Popular self defense guns, like the Glock, are popular because they are very simple and very reliable. Glocks are used by 2/3 of police in the US because of it.
You really think it's not a scandal when the US government gives 2500+ guns to Mexican drug cartels, which are then used to murder hundreds of Mexican citizens (so far) and at least one US border patrol agent? Let's not even bring the issue of responsibility into it; no questions about how much Holder and Obama knew, or when they knew it, or why they never released the subpena'd documents congress demanded, or the illegal use of executive privilege to just make it all go away. Simply keep the question in terms of,"the US government did it." Was it a scandal?
None of what you said changes the fact that private enterprise gives you options, while the government doesn't. If I don't like my medical care I can change plans, change doctors, do more preventative things on my own, go get care in a different country, etc. If I don't like my food I can order something different, eat at a different restaurant, cook at home, buy from a different supermarket, grow what I like to supplement the rest, etc. If I don't like my bank I can go to a different one, join a credit union, join an online bank, not use a bank (yes, it's possible), etc.
If I don't like the way the government is demanding I do something, my options are comply, or go to jail.
No one, except you, is trying to argue that private enterprise presents you with two options: eat this burrito or starve to death. But we all agree that this is exactly the way the government operates.
Private enterprise doesn't FORCE you to pay for it. If you determine that their product, with the costs of their failures built into it, does not present you with sufficient value for your money, you can choose to not buy it.
Government on the other hand will force you to pay for it every time. If you try to refuse, they bring guns.
Imagine if Michael Bloomburg and MAIG and VPC really were interested in protecting children. They would take the millions of dollars they spend every year attacking gun rights and instead use it to prevent child drowning deaths. Water-related accidents are the second most frequent cause of child injury or death. If you own a gun, and you have a pool, your children are over 100 times as likely to drown in the pool than be killed by the gun. http://www.smartparentshealthykids.com/blog/?p=11
Now imagine if the anti-gun people were trying to help kids, the NRA wouldn't have to spend $200,000,000 a year defending gun rights, and they could spend that money to keep kids safe too.
I live in Canada and out of all my friends and family, 0% of them have a gun.
THAT YOU KNOW OF! That's the problem. You're only assuming no one has them as you can never know for sure. And given Canada's recent failed attempts at gun registration you shouldn't be surprised if people respond to your queries by saying, "Of course I don't own a gun," whether they do or not.
How can you protect your children from ever coming into contact with a gun at a friend's house? The homes of gun owners don't have giant neon signs out front declaring it for you. Unless you keep your child on a leash until they're 18, they WILL go into homes with guns.
You're basically advocating the firearms version of abstinence-only education: keep your children as ignorant as possible and just hope they never get into a situation where they would have benefited from actually having been educated.
What if I just want to let my neighbor shoot it in my backyard? Now I can't. What if my random friend or family member comes to visit for a few days and needs to use it for self defense? Too bad!
Actions have consequences. Some are mere annoying inconveniences, and others are deadly.
There are laws to prosecute people who are responsible for minors encountering guns and getting hurt, and the parents of the little girl who was killed a few weeks ago should be prosecuted under them.
While it's clear that you mean the best for your children, your plan to ensure their safety would only lead them to harm the first time they encounter a gun without you around to stop them. Consider that somewhere between 33% - 45% of US households have a gun in them. Your children WILL be going into those houses in the normal course of growing up and having friends. Your choices are to ignore the possibility and blindly assume that none of your neighbors own guns, or accept that some do and educate your children on what to do: http://eddieeagle.nra.org/
As much as you love your children and want to protect them, keeping them in the dark about guns does not help you do it.
Perhaps it's worth noting that, when the First Amendment was instituted, journalism and the publishing of opinions was a cottage industry. On the flip side, it's probably fair to say the founders were most interested in the protection of large newspaper conglomerates, not individuals' blogs. The blog was developed for the sole purpose of inflammatory political speech; not so with large newspaper empires, though initial development mainly concentrated on that purpose..
Your post is baffling. Most of the opinions you express are objectively wrong, with the rest being strongly arguably wrong. What relevance it has to the discussion at hand escapes me. The founders were very clear in their personal letters, published essays, and speeches that the right to keep and bear arms was not limited to any narrow (or even broad) subtypes, and that it was to be enjoyed by all of the people.
Please, go read about the definition of "well-regulated." (It doesn't mean what it means today)
Go read about the success of "gun-free" zones where almost every one of these shootings has taken place. (Newtown, Aurora, Ft Hood, Columbine, Virginia Tech.. all of them were gun-free zones)
Go read about how often these "high capacity assault weapons" are really used in murders. (less often than hands and feet and hammers)
And go read about crime statistics in the UK and Australia: after AND before their bans, gun crime AND all violent crime. (crime was decreasing before, and continued to decrease after with no uptick in the rate of decrease. Gun crime went down, and other violent crime went up because there were fewer guns available and fewer people able to defend themselves)
Your arguments are appealing on the surface, but every one of them breaks down under scrutiny. Take some time to read and become informed.
There's already SCOTUS precedent protecting the implements of rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Star_Tribune_Company_v._Commissioner
Bans and taxes on ammo would be unconstitutional for the same reason.
Additionally, no one believes they would do anything but punish lawful gun owners. Your criminals who commit almost all of the gun crimes don't go to the gun range and shoot 300 rounds in an afternoon practicing, and they don't join their local IDPA league and shoot 5000 rounds over the course of a season. Instead they shoot whatever was in the gun when it was stolen and sold to them out of the back of a van.
An ammo tax would ONLY hurt people using guns for lawful purposes.
By conservative estimates there are at least 300,000,000 guns in the US. For the most recent year that statistics are available, there were about 11,000 non-suicide gun deaths (but this number still includes lawful homicide [ie, death by cop], lawful self defense, accidents, criminal on criminal murder [the most common type in gun control utopias like Chicago] and finally, bad guys killing good guys).
That means that 0.00366% of guns were used in a "gun death", and again that number still reflects a lot deaths that are not representative of people "not acting responsibly."
Again, by conservative estimates, there are at least 80,000,000 gun owners in the US. If we still (wrongfully) assume that all 11,000 of those deaths were "bad" (ie, by ignoring the societally beneficial effect of cops lawfully killing bad guys, citizens lawfully killing bad guys, and bad guys killing bad guys), then 0.013% of gun owners caused a gun death. It looks like more than 99.987% of gun owners do, in fact, act responsibly with their firearms.
Now consider that gun accidents are at a 20 year low, and gun related homicide is at a nearly 40 year low, and in the same time period we've gone to 49 states having concealed carry (it'll be 50 this summer), 45 having open carry, a 10-year cosmetic feature ban expiring, a 10-year standard capacity magazine ban expiring, and over 15,000,000 new guns sold each year with new sales records being set almost every year.
Your argument has some stirring emotion, but it doesn't stand up to the numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for curiosity's sake, where is "around here?"
Specific to this case, GZ was carrying his gun concealed, so how would TM have been justified in beating him to death over a gun he didn't know existed?
Additionally, self defense laws in the US almost never make mention of a type of weapon. The type of weapons used by the aggressor and the defender don't matter, only threats of and reactions to great bodily harm. If the whole GZ/TM story had happened with only fists, it would have been no different in the eyes of the law.
Once you understand that the public education system is not concerned with public education, then decisions like this start to make more sense. Public schools have become a day care to relieve bad parents, a welfare program for otherwise unemployable people masquerading as "teachers," an efficient way to grow bureaucracy, and a tool for channeling government money to cronies. In that light, burning another $30,000,000 on a "solution" that will only further worsen the outcomes of public education makes complete sense.
You missed the mark on two related points, but your heart is in the right place:
First, the NRA is monstrously powerful not because of the gun industry support. I mean, they give a lot of money to the NRA, but it pales in comparison to the donations from 5,000,000+ members. Secondly, it's not the tech industry that needs to take note, it's people who need to take note.
Look at the SOPA internet blackout. It worked, not because some of the major tech companies grudgingly signed on late in the planning stage in order to not lose face, but because of all the people who pulled down their individual websites, wrote congresspeople, and got involved. People did that. Not the tech companies.
So yes, much can be learned from the NRA, and the first lesson is that it's the people who have the power, not the companies. An EFF with 5 million active supporters would be as much of a beast in Washington as the NRA is.
I know you think you're being a clever troll, but I'll dignify your comment with a response anyway:
It is understood that in America, we have four boxes for the defense of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are to be used in exactly that order.
The soap box is protected by our First Amendment. We can speak, organize, meet, protest, write, etc. The government has been attacking the first amendment at a slow pace since Bush Jr ("Protest zones"), and picked up the pace more recently, ie, AP phone taps.
The ballot box is our right to vote out bad politicians, vote in the ones we hope will be better, recall ones who have betrayed their promises, donate to and support politicians, and run for office ourselves.
The jury box is two-side: it is the rights we have when accused of a crime, and the rights we have as jurors. It is protected by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments. As defendants we are protected against unreasonable search and seizure, self-incrimination, cruel or unusual punishment, and we have the right to a jury trial. As jurors, we have the right to nullify unconstitutional and unjust laws. These rights have been under attack in America for over a century, and the offensive has kicked into overdrive since the start of the War on Terror.
The cartridge box is our right to own modern weaponry, and is protected by the Second Amendment. The government has been attacking it with increased fervor since 1934. It constitutes the last defense of liberty, and any dictator knows you can't enslave people who are armed, thus the recent push to bar the ownership of modern weapons.
To directly answer your question: No, now is not the time when we're supposed to organize and overthrow the government, not by a long shot. Now is the time to do what we're doing here: talk, get mad, organize, protest, write letters, etc. Let your representatives know you're angry. When the 2014 elections start ramping up, support politicians you think will support what you support. Oppose politicians who went along with this mess. If you have the opportunity, sit on a jury and nullify the malicious prosecution of a law that has no business being a law. And if you like, if you're of the mind that one day in the future the first three boxes will be exhausted, buy a gun, or buy some more ammo, or take a training class.
All these things are your right as a human, but rights come with responsibilities. One of those is working as hard as you can through the current system, to solve your problems without bloodshed.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Not to be too overly ironic, but rape isn't a sexy crime. Legislators and prosecutors need to battle sexy crimes to get reelected, which is why we see the juxtaposition we have in this story. In some states (CA, MA, NJ) violation of their gun laws, even absent hurting anyone, will get your a longer sentence than rape will.
http://www.gunnews.com/new-jersey-gun-laws-punish-tx-man-for-legally-owned-guns/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChd6QchaU
If you're one of the advocates of continually increasing the size and power of government, then congratulations! We're reaping what you've sown.
When we let the government grow and grow and grow with no limits, no accountability, borrow uncontrollably, print money uncontrollably, raise the debt ceiling time after time, and continually increase the list of things we expect them to do for us, we end up with this: agencies so huge and powerful that they're always watching you.
A government big enough to give you anything, is big enough to take everything. Remember this the next time you're clamoring for another giant government bureaucracy that you hope will allow you to shed some more of your personal responsibility.
The statistics on this issue are rather inconclusive. They're all self reported, to start with. They measure households with guns, not people with guns, and the average size of a US household continues to drop (meaning gun ownership by person could be level or increasing, and the statistic would still says that ownership by household was going down). Several highly respected polling companies show results that are at odds with each other. Even NPR, which typically marches in lock step with the gun control agenda ran a story a few months ago about the discrepancies in polls of gun ownership.
How about you run away from the thugs instead of towards your car?
Because I have a limp, old injury, I'm overweight, I'm in a wheelchair, or the younger assailants just flat run faster than I do. Retreat is not always an option, especially for the young, old, infirm, and for some females and a few males.
Oh wait, you get all your facts from TV.
A) the constitution, by design, can be changed.
Get 2/3 of both houses of congress, and 3/4 of state legislatures, and strike the second amendment then. Go ahead. Small changes to gun law couldn't pass in a Democrat controlled senate with a president spending a huge amount of capital to push it. I'm sure you'll have no trouble amending the constitution to outlaw guns.
b) The thought they were important enough for a well regulated militia.
Why you people can't read the whole god damn sentence is beyond me.
I did read the whole sentence. It ends with, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I would challenge you to not only read the amendment yourself, but read the rest of the bill of rights, and see what other rights the founding fathers thought that the "people" possessed inalienably. Ask yourself if you believe those other rights of people are associated with membership in an organized group, or were individual rights. It's all or nothing. Either "people's" rights are individual or collective contingent on some membership. (To save you the time, the first, fourth, ninth, and tenth amendments all refer to these "people.") The writers of the constitution were lawyers and lawmakers; they knew words had meanings, and that you must use them consistently.
Hint: is was becasue we couldn't afford a standing army. EOL.
It's very clear in all the letters and writing. If we could have afforded a standing army, that bit wouldn't be there.
What's even more clear is their desire for individual people to be armed. Try these: http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/gun-quotations-founding-fathers
I also like how in your scenario the thugs didn't have a gun.
You leave you office building, a thug shoots you, takes your wallet and gun, and you die with the comforting feeling they a murder has your gun.
No one who carries a gun believes it's a magical talisman against harm. It levels the playing field, and gives you more options that you have without one.
You can make a gun the just plain works AND hove a bio metric ID system. The fact that you cna't think of anything just another indicator of your sub par thinking skills.
Several posters on this topic have explained why it wont work. And please don't resort to insults.
It's interesting how rampant gun fan's paranoia is. This story isn't about forcing everyone to have the technology, it is about a company trying to get funding to develop the viable first version. It's like you won't even entertain the idea that the technology could exist or be trialled. Maybe some people might even want to buy it if it works. Is that so terrible, so frightening?
This is a long read, but the fact that you used the words "gun fan" and not "gun nut" or "gun crazy" makes me think you're not totally lost. It sums up why we gun owners and second amendment defenders don't trust even the pursuit of this technology. We know from history that it WILL be used as another attempt for gun control.
http://m.iowastatedaily.com/mobile/opinion/article_1c144792-b36d-11e2-8ac6-001a4bcf887a.html
I have a question for the sceptics like you. If this technology were extremely cheap and reliable would you still object to it? If the answer is "no" why do you object to spending money on development.
Yes. Being "extremely reliable" is not good enough for a gun you would use for self defense. If the smart tech is anything but 100% reliable, then it reduces the overall reliability, and I wont use it.
Popular self defense guns, like the Glock, are popular because they are very simple and very reliable. Glocks are used by 2/3 of police in the US because of it.
It's imagined.
If you have a gun, and a pool, your kids are 100 times more likely to drown in the pool than die by the gun. http://www.smartparentshealthykids.com/blog/?p=11
You really think it's not a scandal when the US government gives 2500+ guns to Mexican drug cartels, which are then used to murder hundreds of Mexican citizens (so far) and at least one US border patrol agent? Let's not even bring the issue of responsibility into it; no questions about how much Holder and Obama knew, or when they knew it, or why they never released the subpena'd documents congress demanded, or the illegal use of executive privilege to just make it all go away. Simply keep the question in terms of ,"the US government did it." Was it a scandal?
Please tell me what you would consider a scandal.
None of what you said changes the fact that private enterprise gives you options, while the government doesn't. If I don't like my medical care I can change plans, change doctors, do more preventative things on my own, go get care in a different country, etc. If I don't like my food I can order something different, eat at a different restaurant, cook at home, buy from a different supermarket, grow what I like to supplement the rest, etc. If I don't like my bank I can go to a different one, join a credit union, join an online bank, not use a bank (yes, it's possible), etc.
If I don't like the way the government is demanding I do something, my options are comply, or go to jail.
No one, except you, is trying to argue that private enterprise presents you with two options: eat this burrito or starve to death. But we all agree that this is exactly the way the government operates.
You know how I can tell you've never been involved in doing SPEC and SOW for a government issued RFP/RFQ?
Private enterprise doesn't FORCE you to pay for it. If you determine that their product, with the costs of their failures built into it, does not present you with sufficient value for your money, you can choose to not buy it.
Government on the other hand will force you to pay for it every time. If you try to refuse, they bring guns.
Imagine if Michael Bloomburg and MAIG and VPC really were interested in protecting children. They would take the millions of dollars they spend every year attacking gun rights and instead use it to prevent child drowning deaths. Water-related accidents are the second most frequent cause of child injury or death. If you own a gun, and you have a pool, your children are over 100 times as likely to drown in the pool than be killed by the gun. http://www.smartparentshealthykids.com/blog/?p=11
Now imagine if the anti-gun people were trying to help kids, the NRA wouldn't have to spend $200,000,000 a year defending gun rights, and they could spend that money to keep kids safe too.
Imagine the shit that could get accomplished!
I live in Canada and out of all my friends and family, 0% of them have a gun.
THAT YOU KNOW OF! That's the problem. You're only assuming no one has them as you can never know for sure. And given Canada's recent failed attempts at gun registration you shouldn't be surprised if people respond to your queries by saying, "Of course I don't own a gun," whether they do or not.
How can you protect your children from ever coming into contact with a gun at a friend's house? The homes of gun owners don't have giant neon signs out front declaring it for you. Unless you keep your child on a leash until they're 18, they WILL go into homes with guns.
You're basically advocating the firearms version of abstinence-only education: keep your children as ignorant as possible and just hope they never get into a situation where they would have benefited from actually having been educated.
What if I just want to let my neighbor shoot it in my backyard? Now I can't.
What if my random friend or family member comes to visit for a few days and needs to use it for self defense? Too bad!
Actions have consequences. Some are mere annoying inconveniences, and others are deadly.
There are laws to prosecute people who are responsible for minors encountering guns and getting hurt, and the parents of the little girl who was killed a few weeks ago should be prosecuted under them.
While it's clear that you mean the best for your children, your plan to ensure their safety would only lead them to harm the first time they encounter a gun without you around to stop them. Consider that somewhere between 33% - 45% of US households have a gun in them. Your children WILL be going into those houses in the normal course of growing up and having friends. Your choices are to ignore the possibility and blindly assume that none of your neighbors own guns, or accept that some do and educate your children on what to do: http://eddieeagle.nra.org/
As much as you love your children and want to protect them, keeping them in the dark about guns does not help you do it.
Would you say the parents of these children need mental help? http://www.khou.com/news/crime/Burglary-suspect-shot-by-15-year-old-son-of-deputy-97430719.html
Perhaps it's worth noting that, when the First Amendment was instituted, journalism and the publishing of opinions was a cottage industry. On the flip side, it's probably fair to say the founders were most interested in the protection of large newspaper conglomerates, not individuals' blogs. The blog was developed for the sole purpose of inflammatory political speech; not so with large newspaper empires, though initial development mainly concentrated on that purpose. .
Your post is baffling. Most of the opinions you express are objectively wrong, with the rest being strongly arguably wrong. What relevance it has to the discussion at hand escapes me. The founders were very clear in their personal letters, published essays, and speeches that the right to keep and bear arms was not limited to any narrow (or even broad) subtypes, and that it was to be enjoyed by all of the people.
You seem well-meaning, but misinformed.
Please, go read about the definition of "well-regulated." (It doesn't mean what it means today)
Go read about the success of "gun-free" zones where almost every one of these shootings has taken place. (Newtown, Aurora, Ft Hood, Columbine, Virginia Tech.. all of them were gun-free zones)
Go read about how often these "high capacity assault weapons" are really used in murders. (less often than hands and feet and hammers)
And go read about crime statistics in the UK and Australia: after AND before their bans, gun crime AND all violent crime. (crime was decreasing before, and continued to decrease after with no uptick in the rate of decrease. Gun crime went down, and other violent crime went up because there were fewer guns available and fewer people able to defend themselves)
Your arguments are appealing on the surface, but every one of them breaks down under scrutiny. Take some time to read and become informed.
There's already SCOTUS precedent protecting the implements of rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Star_Tribune_Company_v._Commissioner Bans and taxes on ammo would be unconstitutional for the same reason. Additionally, no one believes they would do anything but punish lawful gun owners. Your criminals who commit almost all of the gun crimes don't go to the gun range and shoot 300 rounds in an afternoon practicing, and they don't join their local IDPA league and shoot 5000 rounds over the course of a season. Instead they shoot whatever was in the gun when it was stolen and sold to them out of the back of a van. An ammo tax would ONLY hurt people using guns for lawful purposes.
By conservative estimates there are at least 300,000,000 guns in the US. For the most recent year that statistics are available, there were about 11,000 non-suicide gun deaths (but this number still includes lawful homicide [ie, death by cop], lawful self defense, accidents, criminal on criminal murder [the most common type in gun control utopias like Chicago] and finally, bad guys killing good guys).
That means that 0.00366% of guns were used in a "gun death", and again that number still reflects a lot deaths that are not representative of people "not acting responsibly."
Again, by conservative estimates, there are at least 80,000,000 gun owners in the US. If we still (wrongfully) assume that all 11,000 of those deaths were "bad" (ie, by ignoring the societally beneficial effect of cops lawfully killing bad guys, citizens lawfully killing bad guys, and bad guys killing bad guys), then 0.013% of gun owners caused a gun death. It looks like more than 99.987% of gun owners do, in fact, act responsibly with their firearms.
Now consider that gun accidents are at a 20 year low, and gun related homicide is at a nearly 40 year low, and in the same time period we've gone to 49 states having concealed carry (it'll be 50 this summer), 45 having open carry, a 10-year cosmetic feature ban expiring, a 10-year standard capacity magazine ban expiring, and over 15,000,000 new guns sold each year with new sales records being set almost every year.
Your argument has some stirring emotion, but it doesn't stand up to the numbers.