The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Farm Boy]

Quick, identify the areas that experience the greatest numbers of shootings and bring maximum enforcement to bear.

Or wait, "Send them over there, where they're up to no good and cause all this BS anyways."

I dunno, this is an interesting turn on the laws aren't enforced so they don't matter anyways. Gotta admit. Maybe those rising law enforcement algorithms along with facial recognition dragnets will sort it.

 

[rah]

If you're crying that the there are too many laws restricting your rights to do something but they aren't enforced, there's no reason to whine about it.
Not saying that don't matter, just that you can't use them when you're arguing about them.

I'm asking for actually requiring gun safety classes, proper registration and background checks. Why is that not reasonable? I'm not saying take them away, just be more responsible about it. But any inch is too big to most.

 

[Farm Boy]

If you're crying that the there are too many laws restricting your rights to do something but they aren't enforced, there's no reason to whine about it.

Absolutely disagree. This is a main intake where bigotry is whitewashed in the institution of force, and algorithms seem to be at least as good at it as humans.

 

[rah]

Damn, lost me there. But as my wife tells me, it's not that hard.

I don't see how you can whine about excessive regulations when they aren't enforced.

 

[Farm Boy]

When the what isn't enforced the who will be. Just how it works.

 

[rah]

Not what I'm claiming.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

On what basis do you make this assertion? There are vehicles that aren't street legal, but this is also true for guns. To my knowledge, simply owning the former isn't illegal, which suggests that guns might be more heavily regulated...though it's hard to make a one to one comparison between these.

The current owner of every car is documented, providing a complete history. The cost of maintaining that documentation is paid through annual registration fees paid by the owner of the car. In the vast majority of states that annual registration process includes periodic presentation of the car for inspection. Transferring ownership, whether personally or through a dealer, requires full documentation of the buyer. Insurance to protect bystanders is required for operation. In most states to sell more than a very small number in any given year requires a sales license. Possession/operation by other than the registered owner is subject to investigation as automatic probable cause.

 

[cardgame]

Meanwhile I have had my gun transferred to me via private party which requires no background checks (not that it would have mattered since I was 15) no wait time, no paperwork between the two of us and definitely no paperwork between private citizens and the government. Not even a third-party record of the transaction exists, since it was done in cash.

No, this is not black market, this is on-the-books legal

 

[rah]

Yes, the regulations on gun ownership are so onerous.

 

[Farm Boy]

Not what I'm claiming.

Understood. It's what I'm claiming. I mean, I'm ok with a certain degree of capriciousness in leniency when it comes to minor stuff. Firearms offenses are often of the notminor category in possession and transportation. Hodgepodge, lackluster, and therefor capricious enforcement of major law breeds contempt of law and governance.

Yes, the regulations on gun ownership are so onerous.

Depends on the where and the gun. It's a big country.

 

[rah]

I just wish it was as difficult to buy a gun as to get a drivers license in more places. Which really doesn't sound very onerous at all.

Due to the possible dangers to others, I put it up right there with DWI charges. I've seen estimates of over a million of those every year. Wonder how many notminor firearms arrests a year.

 

[Arwon]

I do drive. I'm also not advocating 0 regulations on firearms (see earlier discussion on 2nd amendment original purpose being effectively dead by tech advance), and firearms are also "already heavily regulated".

Does your government even know who owns all the guns

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Does your government even know who owns all the guns

Nope. Not a clue. Not even most of the guns. Technically, not ANY of the guns.

There are guns that are still owned by the person who bought them from a dealer; the "registered owner." But there is no way for anyone to say "yes, this gun is still in the hands of the registered owner" so even those are unknowns.

 

[Berzerker]

I can buy a car without any regulations, those kick in when I want to drive the car on public land. If I keep it at home like a gun I dont even have to register it, nothing.

 

[rah]

I'd actually have no problem with someone that buys a gun and just keeps it on his property. And let the regulations kick in when they want to take their gun on public land. Registered and licensed.

 

[Arwon]

It's also not necessarily true that you can do whatever you like with a vehicle on private property. For example, you still can't drink-drive, and you can be breath-tested, on private land in Australia - https://autoexpert.com.au/owning-a-car/legal/do-the-road-rules-apply-on-private-property

Likewise, since in this country there's rules about firearms storage and you need to submit a plan for legal storage as part of licensing, police can inspect your registered firearms storage practice as part of the conditions you declared when you got your firearms license, too.

Gotta say I don't think this "ah-hah! private property means and should mean no rules!" principle is particularly persuasive.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I can buy a car without any regulations, those kick in when I want to drive the car on public land. If I keep it at home like a gun I dont even have to register it, nothing.

Either Kansas has some very unusual laws, or you are flat wrong. In most states not only the buyer but the seller as well is required to file a transfer of title with the DMV and if either of them fails to do so it triggers a status check, so the only way you could "buy a car with no regulations" is if you buy it from someone who agrees that neither of you will report the transaction. Since that leaves the seller on the hook for whatever you might do with the car that's gonna take some persuasion. Yes, if you keep it at home you can let the registration lapse, but that doesn't mean that you didn't have to do it in the first place.

I'd actually have no problem with someone that buys a gun and just keeps it on his property. And let the regulations kick in when they want to take their gun on public land. Registered and licensed.

The difference being visibility. I can't slip my unregistered vehicle in my coat pocket, so when I take it off my property and it is supposed to be registered it is pretty easily noticed.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

That is actually a point of contention. It is unknown what exactly the Founders meant by "free state". It is assumed they used the word "state" to mean the political entity, but they could just as well have been using the word "state" in the "mode or condition of being" sense.

Well maybe when the biblical scholars finally reach a consensus on what the mighty prophets actually meant, you can form your definitive opinion on the matter.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

That isn't true at all. The ease with which you can actually obtain the thing is actually a better measure

That would be a better measure of whether or not something is well restricted, not well regulated. There's nothing mutually exclusive about something being well regulated, and being easy to obtain.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I found an interesting article in my travels. I had been thinking again about the "Devil's Advocate" position on guns, and it occurred to me that gun proponents always tend to either misunderstand or dismiss suicide as a relevant issue. In doing so, they kind of (inadvertently, perhaps) accept the implied premise, that guns = suicides.

NBC News, 17 Sept. 2018 - "More than 20,000 Americans a year kill themselves with a gun. Alarmed gun sellers are joining the suicide prevention fight."

“At first I was very skeptical, because we have been trained to think when people talk about suicide that it’s nothing more than a veiled attempt to take away our guns,” said Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the state’s biggest gun-rights lobbying group. “Then I checked the data.”

[...]

Aposhian joined the Utah Suicide Prevention Coalition, which has developed literature to distribute at gun shops, produced videos and created a suicide-prevention training module for concealed-carry training courses.

“We’re to the point now where we felt it would be a disservice and inappropriate to our membership to not let them know what’s going on in Utah and across the nation,” Aposhian said.

I'd like to give this guy a virtual fist-bump. I don't know whether and which interventions have an effect, probably a lot of trial and error, but actually trying something is better than just proclaiming "2nd Amendment, mother[lover]!" and looking smug while 39,773 people die (linked to NY Times article).

I'd actually have no problem with someone that buys a gun and just keeps it on his property. And let the regulations kick in when they want to take their gun on public land. Registered and licensed.

I haven't done any, like, research or anything, but off the top of my head, I think I'd be opposed to that. I think that a lot of women who die by homicide are killed by a domestic partner. iirc, a woman who doesn't live alone is actually at greater risk of dying by homicide with a gun in the house than without one. (Playing Devil's Advocate again: Many of those murders occur at the end of a chain of events that could have been handled better, gun or not, so some number of those deaths could be prevented by means other than restricting gun ownership, means that would also address the homicides by knife and manual strangulation, which happen less often than gunshots, but still happen.) I'd also wonder how many gun suicides take place at home, when the person is alone. I'm not sure how often the primetime-drama version of suicide, with the person standing on a ledge while half the city watches in horror and a brave cop or firefighter tries to talk them down, actually happens (it does happen, from time to time, but out of the above-mentioned 20,000 suicides, I think I read about maybe a half-dozen instances of someone publicly attempting suicide in a manner that reaches the news media, such as the girl in Colorado yesterday). I also wonder how many illegal guns in places like Chicago were stolen from law-abiding citizens while they weren't home (iirc, the overwhelming number of home burglaries happen when the residents aren't home, by design of course - burglars don't want to encounter anyone, and when they do it's probably often by mistake).

That would be a better measure of whether or not something is well restricted, not well regulated. There's nothing mutually exclusive about something being well regulated, and being easy to obtain.

Fair point. Another issue is whether legislation actually works. "Prohibition" in the US in the 1920s is usually what leaps to my mind, in that it wasn't merely a failure, it actually worsened the very thing it was aiming to improve. If it's easy to buy or import a gun illegally, and there's a lot of violence, I guess I'm less interested in what the laws are, as they're obviously not working. Still, the teenager who shut down schools in Colorado and then killed herself stepped off a plane and legally bought a shotgun and ammunition the same afternoon (I think). Making it harder to buy a gun legally in Colorado might have given law enforcement more time to find her, and might have prevented her suicide. otoh, if a person can step off a plane in Colorado and buy an illegal gun just as easily, then restricting legal sales wouldn't accomplish a ton. Either way, I guess, the laws regarding gun ownership in Colorado obviously had no bearing on the incident. So restricting the sale of guns - not just making it harder to buy them legally, but actually making them harder to get - ought to be the goal, and laws just a means to an end.