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Love how other people compare us to other advance nations that don't have a problem with mass shootings (i.e Britain/Australia). Well, those countries don't have a 2nd Amendment in place; they simply confiscate any firearm they want from anybody. I'm not sure there's a country that has a similar 2nd amendment like ours.
Personally, if America want to control guns, we will have to amend the 2nd amendment (not going to happen) and i believe, without the 2nd amendment, we wouldn't have the 1st amendment.
When i lived in Switzerland just about everyone I knew had a fully automatic riffle in their home. They don't have a mass shooting problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_po...in_Switzerland"Gun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe. The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training. The personal weapons of the militia are kept at home as part of the military obligations".
We don't have a gun problem in America, we have a heart problem.
Could also look at Israel as an example where many households have guns but they don't have a mass shooter problem either.
Also, the idea that guns protect against a tyrannical government is laughable. We had 11 STATES declare that the federal government was tyrannical in 1861 and then seceded. The families were mostly rural folks that all had a firearm in the house. And guess what? The government brought down a world of hurt on them.
A populace that's armed fights a civil war, but doesn't have the money or logistical ability to fight for a long time without help. Look at Syria. Lots of guns don't prevent tyranny, they just make it work harder.
Part of the problem between the pro-gun folks and anti-gun folks is as follows:
1) Pro-gun folks believe in self-sufficiency, that we are all masters ofmour own destiny and that they will not wait for a police officer to come help them when theyare being attacked and will most likely be dead before help can arrive. They are from old America where people didn't rely on the government and government agencies. These people generally know American history and history as a whole. Many understand the 2nd amendment exists for two reason 1) to protct yourselves and 2) protect our sovernghty from future despots. they don't like whimpy people who constantly call for laws to be made and things to be banned.
2) Anti- gun folks operate on knee-jerk reactions. They hear about a shooting and immediately say "guns are the problem" with no evidence that a killer wouldn't use a myriad of other weapons to kill. They hear about dozens of shootings from mentally ill and criminal people. But ignore the important statistic that 90 million Americans own firearms and have never hurt anyone. These people generally think government has the peoples best intentions at mind, while ignoring that we can type in government corruption in google and have thousands of matched articles. Those are the people you think are going to help you? Anti-gun folks also ignore that thousands of people a year die from car accidents and alcohol releated deaths. but we don't ban those! of course, not.
What I know about history is that a) every major empire in history has fallen due to corruption and tyranny. The people were almost always powerless to do anything. And b) that society works in cycles. Some day, probabaly long after we are all dead, but some day...there will be tyranny in this country. Absolute tyranny. And when that happens, and it will, Americans will use what the founding fathers passed down to them in order to take their country back, the 2nd amendment.
We live in a society today that has a false-sense of security. We think police wll aleays protct us. But do police really come to aid when we are being attacked? Or do they investigate the crime after it is already too late? They cannot be everywhere and I, like many others, believe in self-defense.
in order to live in a free society, we have to make certain sacrifices. Maybe we need to find out where the hatred is coming from that causes people to harm others. These mass killings didn't exist 40 years ago. What has changed? Figure that out, and we can make sime real headway.
I stated my notions earlier in the thread--I'd allow 6 round revolving pistols, double barreled shotguns, double barreled "express" rifles and single shot breech loading rifles and the use modern smokeless powder center fire cartridges. I think that such guns are capable tools for the jobs of work expected of guns; self defense, hunting and target shooting.
Please forgive my oversight. Wow, so all semi-automatic weapons should be banned? And the housewife confronted by two or more burglars/rapists/killers in her home gets only 6 shots to eliminate them all?
More importantly, do all government agencies need to follow these rules as well?
Maybe you and I just have a fundamental disagreement on the role of firearms in the U.S. I see them as tools of security that maintain a balance of power between the people and the government, while also serving as an effective means of individual protection from the criminal element. I'm not opposed to "common sense" regulation. Freely available hand grenades, automatic rifles, RPGs, etc. are not a good idea. But I think we have to be very, very careful(and wary) when we consider narrowing the right to keep arms, and your position sounds extreme to me.
Perhaps someone may have mentioned this already.
1) Commit a felony crime using a firearm of any type as threat / brandishing etc... mandatory jail sentence for x years time. No privileges comforts in place of incarceration.
2) Commit a second felony crime using a firearm of any type in the process and you are made into fertilizer.
I guarantee with this simple law, that
a) You will reduce crimes committed with 'guns' immensely
b) You will eliminate the greatest proportion of repeat offenders and the fungus walking among us
c) Society would be a better place and would likely respect the "Tool" and differentiate the behavior
(Don't hate the tool - hate the behavior of the ignorant who use it destructively).
With "Freedoms" comes Responsibility and this type of law would strongly reorient toward responsibility. Use a firearm in a criminal activity you lose all freedom and privileges. Do it twice you are removed permanently.
You will not be able to eliminate all mentally challenged, but if we as a society (mass media primarily) stop making these types of deranged unstable types from being covered in the news excessively, and instead cover the victims and their families as they try to recover from the devastating loss we'd at least reorient the general public to constructive aspects when tragic things happen.
Too much time wasted on figuring out the 'outliers' with serious mental health problems. I know it seems harsh but it would solve a good percentage of the problem.
Last edited by ciceropolo; 10-04-2015 at 10:51 PM..
Reason: additional
As an Australian I see that that is why there have been more mass shootings in 2015 than there have been days in 2015.
A sign of how sick this country is is that in most places you can only buy a bottle of vodka from the government, but you can buy a gun from craigslist.
It's a hallmark of people who have never actually experienced real carnage that get all self-righteous about it. Civilized countries ARE civilized because people choose not to be in a position to fight all the time.
When I was in the Army I could hit a small target at 300 yards. However, things are different when you shoot at people and they shoot back. I was in the Army 6 years and served in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and I am still very "afraid" of people with shooting at me. There is no way not to be afraid of that. So if you want to get into a damn pissing contest we can play that game. I had years of training.
I am particularly afraid, now that I am a community college professor, that some paranoid schizophrenic may take issue with me and execute me in front of one of my classes because he did not perform well in class and blames me for his D or F. No amount of training would enable me to shoot back fast enough in a situation like the Umpqua one. It's not the gun that scares me, it's the delusional thoughts of the person who holds it. I can't prepare for that and I shouldn't look at every one of my students with the thought that he may be ready to shoot me in the next few seconds.
This has nothing to do with fear of the weapon itself. Civilized societies are not armed to the teeth and neither should they constantly be suspicious of their fellow men.
We're talking about "reasonable" responses here, and no one is saying we should disarm whole populations. No one is talking about UK style gun bans. In Germany or France, there are plenty of people with weapons and they can buy them easily enough. I should know since I was stationed in Germany for a while and investigated the issue. What they do, however, is scrutinize people just a little bit more that we do here so that paranoid schizophrenics and the like don't get their hands on weapons quite so easily. They also require people to be a little more responsible with their weapons.
Which would NOT have stopped the shooting in Oregon.
Do you drive a car? Are you in constant fear of dying in a vehicle crash? Because that's a very real possibility every time you get in a car.
I noticed you shied away from the weak box cutter argument. Classic.
PS... gun control doesn't mean disarming everyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
*snip*
We're talking about "reasonable" responses here, and no one is saying we should disarm whole populations. No one is talking about UK style gun bans. In Germany or France, there are plenty of people with weapons and they can buy them easily enough. I should know since I was stationed in Germany for a while and investigated the issue. What they do, however, is scrutinize people just a little bit more that we do here so that paranoid schizophrenics and the like don't get their hands on weapons quite so easily. They also require people to be a little more responsible with their weapons.
Hey guys, That isn't true.
While we'd like to try to get back on task of finding a middle ground, it is hard to because while some are obviously trying to do that there are others proposing EXACTLY what both of you claim is NOT being proposed:
Here's Bob, who says:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CALGUY
People WITH GUNS kill people.
They also kill with other means, but mainly guns.
Let's get rid of them once and for all.
Bob.
And then Tom, whose "reasonable middle ground" is banning all but:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishtom29
Pistols should be limited to 6 shot revolvers, shotguns limited to break open double barrels and rifles limited to single shot breech loaders. This way people can hunt, target shoot and defend themselves but screwballs will find it much more difficult to massacre large numbers of people. I'd guess I'd allow double barreled express rifles for people who hunt dangerous game.
Notice the last sentence: "I guess I'd allow..."
It is this kind of talk from the gun control side that pushes the dialogue so far to the left, that any rational 2nd amendment proponent loses interest in trying to find any "reasonable middle ground".
We hear it all the time. We've actually seen it already taking place in some cities, so you cannot say "no one is talking about disarming everyone", because there is a large number of gun control advocates who will not be satisfied with anything less.
Most of them kill themselves. They don't get to enjoy the media discussions about them. That's like saying I get a good feeling out of the life insurance payment my family will get if I'm in a car accident.
No.
While you are correct in that it isn't rational, we are dealing with sick people here.
They KNOW they will go down in history. They've seen the shooters get non stop news coverage and quasi-celebrity status for years now.
What I see as the biggest rift between reaching any middle ground is quite obvious after one reads the various suggestions and rebuttals.
By and large, none of the "gun control" measures would actually make an impact on these types of shooters. Most, if not all, aren't criminals and they would pass background checks. There MAY be some mental issues that COULD be addressed, but it is currently a violation of law to compile any type of "national mental health registry".
In order to ask law abiding citizens to give a little bit of their constitutionally guaranteed rights away you are going to have to show a pretty strong likelihood that any such measure would, in fact, make any sort of real impact on curbing these types of tragedies.
So far that has not even been attempted by most of the "anti-gun" crowd. They simply post a few things they'd like to see happen without addressing what effect it would have. The two obvious exceptions are the disarm everyone proponents and those who would eliminate all firearms but a small few select ones.
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