gun control

[Alternat¡ve]

The numbers are about the same actually. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

my point still stands

[Ad Bot]

[Shift Kitty]

I bet your history book came from tumblr because just about every country in the world is guilty of those things. Way to single out one country for something everyone else has done.

Nice, just about every country in the world is guilty of killing native americans.

[Oasis]

I bet your history book came from tumblr because just about every country in the world is guilty of those things. Way to single out one country for something everyone else has done.

Well I mean, he wasn't singling the US out, he was making his point that America was horrible once, which is true.

I like how gun control is either "Everyone can have guns" or "No one can have guns at all."

Bulstuff.  There must be an intelligent way to do it.

Here's the answer that it took 8 pages to get to. It puts the "control" in "gun control". We need to control, as a society and through our government, who is allowed to have guns, where guns should be and how we should better train the general population to handle and act around guns.

The answer is not restrict guns outright or repeal all restrictions on guns, it never will be those two answers, and yet that's all we hear about in this 'debate'.

[Plethora]

Simply put, I don't think there's much of a point to any restrictions beyond those pertaining to mental health.

If I could handle firearms responsibly when I was in high school, the average Joe who isn't in the dumbest part of their life can do so as well.
Putting restrictions beyond a mental health check simply adds a layer of difficulty to accessing a Constitutional right fundamental to all Americans (one so fundamentally important that it was written in before things like double jeopardy or cruel/unusual punishment or votes for women), one that will only affect the law abiding citizen because restrictions will almost always be circumvented by the determined and the unlawful.

Simultaneously, the punishment for gun related crimes, particularly violent ones, should be severe (for instance, forty strokes less one as a starting point), publicized, and strictly enforced.

[SWAT One]

-snip-

I must disagree in that I doubt that the authors of the Constitution predicted the rise and dissemination of deadly weapons such as automatic weapons with the firepower of an entire rifling platoon.  I don't pretend to predict that the drafting body at the time would have advocated for anything different, but I do think that with this knowledge in mind, they would have thought about a better way of addressing it.

[Harm94]

I must disagree in that I doubt that the authors of the Constitution predicted the rise and dissemination of deadly weapons such as automatic weapons with the firepower of an entire rifling platoon.

Rifled technology back then was in infancy, the Hessians brought rifled muskets to the Americans which gave birth the concept of the sniper. Rebels made use of these to take out British officers.

Semi auto technology in there time was indeed un heard of. However Technology moves fast and advances far. No one at the time could have foreseen nukes and drones.

Nice, just about every country in the world is guilty of killing native americans.

Aborigional Peoples in General.

The Scandinavians treated the Laplanders like stuff. England and France treated the native americans like stuff and the native populations of their African and Asian colonies like stuff.

Belgium made Congo a mess.

Russia has a bad track record with the Siberians

Canada treated the native americans like stuff

The Turks tried wiping out the Armenians and the kurds, the Iraqis oppressed the Kurds and Assyrians

etc etc etc

The list goes on forever

[Oasis]

Simply put, I don't think there's much of a point to any restrictions beyond those pertaining to mental health.

If I could handle firearms responsibly when I was in high school, the average Joe who isn't in the dumbest part of their life can do so as well.
Putting restrictions beyond a mental health check simply adds a layer of difficulty to accessing a Constitutional right fundamental to all Americans (one so fundamentally important that it was written in before things like double jeopardy or cruel/unusual punishment or votes for women), one that will only affect the law abiding citizen because restrictions will almost always be circumvented by the determined and the unlawful.

Simultaneously, the punishment for gun related crimes, particularly violent ones, should be severe (for instance, forty strokes less one as a starting point), publicized, and strictly enforced.

I hope you don't honestly think that the order of the amendments correlates to their importance, lol.

[Plethora]

Did they predict that weapons such as that would exist?  We can say no without breaking the bonds of reason.
My point on that was that being armed is a fundamental right in the US.

Perhaps my fault is believing that most people are as trustworthy as myself until shown to be otherwise, but, on a matter of principle, I see no reason to to hinder the law abiding citizen out of fear of the criminal, particularly in this case if those with mental issues are prevented from owning firearms.

90% of the problem is that people will only push through gun control legislation when there's been some kind of an attack, when they're emotional, when they're panicked.  The simple fact is that people don't really care enough to do anything about it when they're in their right of mind.  Until that changes the only 'progress' that will be made will go seven times too far or not at all.

I hope you don't honestly think that the order of the amendments correlates to their importance, lol.

Not as a hard fast rule, no - that would be ridiculous, but some correlation, yes.  If giving votes to women was as important to the people who laid the foundation of the nation as gun ownership was, they'd have put it in there early on - though I'll admit that it would have more accurately reflected my sentiments to have only listed ones outside the initial bill of rights in that set.

[SWAT One]

The thing is though that in many cases, those that shoot up innocent peoples tend to be retroactively declared mentally unstable, even if no diagnosis says so beforehand.  I think that that to some degree puts in question the effectiveness of having psychological screenings.  Either way you put it, there are military grade weapons that many US citizens have access to.  Are these individuals bad people?  No, I don't think that they are by and large, but there are the select few with the right tools to make a huge impact, and that is where I am most concerned.

[Plethora]

The thing is though that in many cases, those that shoot up innocent peoples tend to be retroactively declared mentally unstable, even if no diagnosis says so beforehand.  I think that that to some degree puts in question the effectiveness of having psychological screenings.

True, but from what I can tell, there isn't much in the way of mental health screening that actually goes on when guns are bought and sold.  I can't really say for certain that it would or wouldn't make a difference, but it should at least be tried before broad and unilateral restrictions are enacted.

Either way you put it, there are military grade weapons that many US citizens have access to.  Are these individuals bad people?  No, I don't think that they are by and large, but there are the select few with the right tools to make a huge impact, and that is where I am most concerned.

You could say the same thing about cars.  I don't say that to downplay your concerns, which aren't completely invalid - I won't say that everyone who isn't insane can be trusted with a gun.  Nonetheless, even with my little station wagon I could cause a whole lot of mayhem, let alone with an F-350 or something.  I could kill people by creating toxins with kitchen chemicals.  There are plenty of easily accessible (though admittedly less obvious) ways to kill lots of people without an automatic weapon.  Those who cannot be trusted with a gun cannot be trusted with much of anything else either, but it doesn't make sense to distrust everyone because you can't trust someone - this doesn't mean not exercising caution, just exercising general trust as well.

[Oasis]

Not as a hard fast rule, no - that would be ridiculous, but some correlation, yes.  If giving votes to women was as important to the people who laid the foundation of the nation as gun ownership was, they'd have put it in there early on - though I'll admit that it would have more accurately reflected my sentiments to have only listed ones outside the initial bill of rights in that set.

I agree, that is ridiculous. For you to think that amazes me.

[Taciturn]

Let's not forget that you have to make these laws based on the bottom line. Most Americans can be trusted with guns, but some idiots decided to make a statement or whatever.

Some people can handle drugs like a pro, but when Sally took them she murdered her kids. Now nobody gets to do drugs.

[SeventhSandwich]

I'm fairly liberal, but I lean towards pro-gun because I don't really find any of the arguments for gun regulation very satisfying.

For instance, gun regulation has increased steeply over the past two decades, and the number of mass shootings has actually increased. The overall number of gun deaths in cities has trended downwards, but it's only returned to a level comparable to the US pre-1980s. (The explanation for this usually revolves around violence in youth. Kids born at the end of the baby boomer generation were entering their early 20s. There's not a particularly solid explanation for why violence spiked in those decades.)

I think that trying to target gun sales completely misses the point, which is that the major causes of gun violence (gangs, other criminals, and Hardcore Gamers) can be mitigated by raising more people out of poverty and generating more awareness and more public resources for mental health. All the European countries that people cite as testament examples of places without mass-shootings also have more equality of wealth and more public access to healthcare.

I don't really have a horse in this race (I don't own guns or plan to own any), but I don't think making gun owners jump through more hoops will do anything to solve the root problem.

[Frequency]

yeah I'm in favor of gun control... as long as I have a right to mine lol

[Donro98]

vague wording aside, my point was that by constitutional law, a militia** would be able to rebel against the government.

Sure, but that isn't an argument against gun control. A militia should be able to rebel. Would it be effective? Probably not, but the ability should be there.