The Gun Control Challenge

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Sorry man, but giving a gun to an addict, you have gone too far. Give laws aside and try to use common sense for a while...

what do you mean by "exclude" them?

Last edited by aSKperger on 08 Sep 2012, 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm assuming you want to exclude those people from having the right to own guns. How do you plan on doing that, if not by rule of law.

Sure by rule of law. But BEFORE they commit crimes with gun, not after. I do not give a gun to 3 years old, wait until he pushes the trigger and then spank him.

You claim you don't want to take guns away from innocent people, but you want to take guns away from people *before* they commit crimes with them. You can't have it both ways. You either have a system that skews toward allowing guns to people that may go on to commit crimes with that gun, or you skew toward taking guns away from someone who would not do that.

If you have a perfect system, please lay it out for me. I'd be really interested to know how that works.

I will always skew toward letting a potential criminal buy a gun and do something bad with it than take away an innocent person's ability to defend themselves from the criminal with a gun. I do this partially because most guns used in a crime are either stolen, purchased on a black market, or some other form of illegal procurement. The reason this is so is because gun stores are required to keep records of people who purchase guns, and the results of the *mandatory* criminal background check. It's easier and safer (and very often cheaper) for a criminal to go to his buddy down the block to buy a gun without creating a paper trail. The other reason is because I believe it's far more constructive to trust people until they give you a reason not to.

Most crimes that take place with a gun don't result in a shot being fired. Guns are used by criminals as weapons of intimidation, primarily. The reason this is as effective as it is stems from a) people are generally afraid of guns, mostly due to ignorance and the common acceptance of gun myths (many introduced and perpetuated by hollywood) and b) the criminal is the nearly always the only one in the encounter with a gun. The mere presentation of a gun by the "victim" throws a wrench into the criminal's plans - and there have been numerous cases where the criminal ends up simply abandoning the scene once a gun is pulled on him.

First of all, it is a federal felony to lie about drug use on a background check form, and this even applies to MMJ. Second, you are innocent until proven guilty. That means that watch lists and active FBI files mean nothing as far as a person's civil rights go until they are convicted of a felony. There is no 'sort of assumed guilty' status at least as far as the legal system is concerned- trial by the media doesn't count.



The mentally is mostly just a favorite strawman or whipping boy (take your pick) of the gun control lobby. In reality the mentally ill are insignificant in the gun control debate. The interest in guns in that group is almost non-existent. There is no correlation between wanting a gun and being a danger to others, even among those requiring more intensive (but entirely voluntary) treatment. The mentally ill get a bad rap from a handful of isolated but emotionally charged incidents.


The anarchy and "blood in the streets" arguments have long been disproven when concealed carry increased and crime went down faster than the national average. The wild west arguments are based on the movies rather than history. There were no bandits behind every other rock waiting for a stagecoach, there were no hostile indians behind every other ridge, railroad bridges were not packed with dynamite, banks didn't exist to get robbed, and the "showdown at high noon" is more fiction than fact. I'm not saying that these things never happened, but the 'wild' west was fairly uneventful most of the time. It had staggering amounts of land and very little population. Not only that, but a large percentage of that population was made up of civil war verterans who were extremely good at defending themselves. Most people lived on remote farms and ranches. Most of the trouble happened in and around boomtowns where alcohol and opium were cheap and abundant. Before the O.K. Corral, even Wyatt Earp was only in one other shooting before then. Virgil Earp tried to implement strict gun control in Tombstone shortly before the O.K. Corral and look how that worked out!

I don't have a perfect system, just system that doesn't allow irresponsible blah blah people to have guns. Don't put "innocent" word on the table. We are not in courtroom. There are some conditions you have to meet in order to get gun. (likewise to adopt child, to adopt pet, to drive a car, to get a job)
You meet them = you have gun. If not, you need to find different toy.
If someone don't know how to handle the gun, he can't protect anyone with it. So it is not " take away an innocent person's ability to defend themselves from the criminal with a gun."
You simply need to adjust the criterias right, that's all.
And common criterias are: age
legal capacity
uprightness
integrity/dependability (criminal conviction, mental disorder, drug abuse)
physical capability
demonstrating required knowledge and skills
etc

Last edited by aSKperger on 08 Sep 2012, 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is actually a really good point - it's a felony to lie on any part of the background check form. Since I'd imagine most of the people in this thread have never actually filled one of these forms out, here's what it looks like: http://www.atf.gov/forms/download/atf-f-4473-1.pdf

You'll notice they ask a lot of very specific questions (some of which are unintentionally hilarious - my favorite is "are you a fugitive from justice?")

You have to be 18 to purchase a long gun, 21 for a pistol. That is current law.



What does that even mean?

Gee, sounds a lot like the questions they ask on the background check form.

To do what? Pull the trigger? I hardly think we really need to test for that.

What constitutes "required knowledge"? The only knowledge that someone who is purchasing needs to know is what the laws are in their area - and the government isn't required to tell the person what the laws are - it's their responsibility to follow them.

I don't think the framers of the constitution ever knew of a world where guns were more dangerous than what they were used against. They faced very real wildlife threats, and very real abusive political systems. Odds are good they'd be shocked that we require licenses for driving cars, given that cars were something that they could not have predicted. Sometimes laws and concepts do have to get adapted to fit with the times, although I am not going to suggest we remove part of our constitution. But I will suggest that adaptive policies could be good, recognizing that what guns mean where I live (no good reason to have one in a home, and no one has ever convinced me otherwise; a teen almost got shot by a neighbor in the middle of the night trying to find the hidden key for his own home) is different than what they mean in a rural life (protection against wild animals and traveling criminals) or in a violence ridden area. I see the conflicting needs and realities and realize that across the board laws aren't a very good way to adapt to them all, but there still has to be something. Education seems like the best something. And I wouldn't have an issue with broad based safety education, as long as no one is forcing my kids to actually handle weapons.

My son has gun training (safety and shooting). I will never allow a gun in my home, but my son has gun training. It was so weird for me signing that permission slip, but they've done a great job teaching him. Some things are realities in our lives, and it doesn't make sense to run and hide from them.

To me, a license is mostly proof that you received education and know the rules. Same reason we take a written driver's test every decade.

There is no question you are going to be more informed than me on all matters in this area. I'll let the rest of you write the actual laws. Understanding how people like me feel just gives those doing the guidelines a sense of the political realities, some idea of what to appease. And I'm OK with the current balance, I don't have a drastic need to change it.

I'm just curious, why would kids handling weapons be bad? (Assuming the obvious -- that they have appropriate supervision.)

Innocent until proven guilty is the standard because having some sort of court order against you is the standard to lose your guns.
Additionally, adopting kids has similar standards as buying guns, except it usually doesn't matter if you don't have money to shoot or care for your guns, shelters can't give pets away fast enough to keep up, cars have strict standards to take them out in public but does not blanketly ban felons and the mentally ill permanently, and sometimes except for lately getting a job can require as little as a valid social security number and a pulse.

My opinion matters 100 times more than yours. But my 4 points are not opinions they are facts. Your failure to admit them and your laughable attempts to dismiss them has confirmed you as a clown.

Reposting the four points who seem to scare gun clowns so much:

1. The function of guns is killing (animals or humans). They are designed with killing in mind. The gun industry would rate a gun that cannot kill as a bad quality one. The first ever use for a gun was killing humans.

2. Guns are a tool. All tools have a primary function and the primary function of the tool called "gun" is to kill.

3. It is perfectly possible to regulate something without making it illegal or reducing your rights to get it. Example: liquor, cars, adopted infants.

4. The 'recreational' practices that you can make with a gun happen to all be practice at being better at killing with them and unless you use blanks are still very dangerous if performed by the wrong person. Hence still need some regulation.

It isn't about bad or good, it is about parents having a say in if their children are allowed to handle weapons or not.

I had to sign a permission slip for my son to practice at the firing range at summer camp. It is appropriate for parents to have a say.

Yeah? And entry visas are about what then? And this is also the main purpose of background check - to find out if you lie. Or do you think they just read your form, and if you said that you are clean, they approve? Note - it doesn't automatically mean you go to jail when lying. You just don't pass...


no comment, has nothing to do with serious debate


until the EU crime rates are not reached, this has very little value if any at all.

Forget the wild west remark ( it suggests how some people call today's USA, not past)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_%28law%29



Nice you noticed. It is. But actual background check in US, that's poor joke. If you legaly exclude private sells, it is BS and has no meaning.

This is the difference between US and EU/Commonwealth. In EU, it is real, mandatory check before anyone can buy a gun from anybody. Yeah yeah...black market tale I know. Well, try to get some black gun here and then talk about it...

Man, that "gun control ret*ds reading comprehension thesis" is getting more tempting by the post...