Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Obviously, everyone is disgusted and saddened by what happened in Colorado. This was clearly a disturbed individual who decided to massacre defenseless people for as-of-yet unknown reasons.
There is an antagonism between gun proponents (GPs) (full-disclosure, I would consider myself one) and those who are in favor of gun-control, or outright bans (GCs).
GPs are threatened about a rachet-effect that would eventually end in guns being effectively banned. Each law is viewed as an incremental step, so it is opposed. GPs don't want massacres like this to happen, but don't want some deranged persons actions taking away rights from the law-abiding.
GCs don't want fights in the streets escalating into funerals. GCs don't want massacres like this to happen, and think that the laws should be constructed in such a way to keep guns out of the hands of nuts like this shooter.
As each side of the gun debate entrenches, I have a few good-faith questions.
My questions to GCs:
- If someone in the audience had a gun, could this have been prevented? Could one life have been saved? A distraction for or some sort of intimidation towards the shooter?
- Should body-armor have similar purchase restrictions as guns?
- If he had no history of mental illness and therefore no reason to be denied purchase of a gun, why should he be denied purchase of a gun?
- If the current gun control laws didn't stop this, is it possible that some are ineffective? Can they be taken away as a goodwill gesture towards GPs?
My questions to GPs:
- Should there be a federal database of gun purchases, including internet sales?
- Should body-armor have similar purchase restrictions as guns?
- Are there some styles of guns that are currently legal that should be outlawed? (Machetes v knives)
- Should there be a limit to how many guns can be purchased in a period of time?
I expect that my ignorance will show, and that my assertions/questions will be eviscerated in the comments.
I know that if someone I cared about was in that theater, I would have wanted him to be armed.
Please school me on where I'm wrong.
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Even if we lived in a police state where no one had a gun, how hard is it to make a Molotov cocktail? You need a glass jar, some gasoline, a wick, and a match. The guy who shot up the Gabby Giffords rally could have killed just as many people in that parking lot by simply running them over with his car. Perhaps people find it comforting to think that if only we gave government enough authority they could prevent all mass murders, but I don't believe it can be done.
Apr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
ConservativeWanderer: Washington DC has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation.
Washington DC has the highest rate of firearms deaths per 100,000 citizens.
With those two facts, how can any person who's able to determine which shoe goes on which foot in less than 30 minutes each morning argue that gun control laws make people safer? · 36 minutes ago
DC isn't a good argument. They would just say that the problem is guns coming in from Virginia and Maryland. That's why you need a national ban.
As with nearly all leftist arguments, the problems always come from not enough government. If the gun controllers passed every law on their wish list and next year ONE nut out of 300 million shot someone it would be because we didn't do enough.
Jun '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Cutlass
ConservativeWanderer: Washington DC has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation.
Washington DC has the highest rate of firearms deaths per 100,000 citizens.
With those two facts, how can any person who's able to determine which shoe goes on which foot in less than 30 minutes each morning argue that gun control laws make people safer? · 36 minutes ago
DC isn't a good argument. They would just say that the problem is guns coming in from Virginia and Maryland. That's why you need a national ban.
As with nearly all leftist arguments, the problems always come from not enough government. If the gun controllers passed every law on their wish list and next year ONE nut out of 300 million shot someone it would be because we didn't do enough. · 6 minutes ago
I've encountered that argument. I have a simple counter-argument.
Canada and Mexico, especially Mexico.
If we can't keep Mexican immigrants from crossing the border, how will we keep Mexican guns from crossing it?
Apr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
ConservativeWanderer
Cutlass
As with nearly all leftist arguments, the problems always come from not enough government. If the gun controllers passed every law on their wish list and next year ONE nut out of 300 million shot someone it would be because we didn't do enough. · 6 minutes agoDC isn't a good argument. They would just say that the problem is guns coming in from Virginia and Maryland. That's why you need a national ban.
I've encountered that argument. I have a simple counter-argument.
Canada and Mexico, especially Mexico.
If we can't keep Mexican immigrants from crossing the border, how will we keep Mexican guns from crossing it? · 23 minutes ago
Ah, very good. My guess at a lefty response is either:
A) call you a racist
B) backtrack by insisting that we simply have to do something to reduce the amount of guns.
or
C) insist that Mexican guns all come from the US (meaning manufactures, not Eric Holder).
Jun '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Cutlass
ConservativeWanderer
I've encountered that argument. I have a simple counter-argument.
Canada and Mexico, especially Mexico.
If we can't keep Mexican immigrants from crossing the border, how will we keep Mexican guns from crossing it? · 23 minutes ago
Ah, very good. My guess at a lefty response is either:
A) call you a racist
B) backtrack by insisting that we simply have to dosomethingto reduce the amount of guns.
or
C) insist that Mexican guns all come from the US (meaning manufactures, not Eric Holder). · 6 minutes ago
A and B are self-refuting.
C is a bit more difficult to explain to your average lefty who's unused to critical thought, but it has to do with where there is a surplus of items and where there is a shortage. If all US guns were banned, that would create a shortage, also not incidentally driving the price up, which would encourage Mexicans to sell us guns, or people from other nations (Russia? China? Germany makes good guns too.) to sell to us using Mexico as an intermediary.
Oct '10
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Lives taken by guns in a theater massacre: 12
Lives saved by responsible gun owners: hard to report in one tidy statistic--but surely greater than the total number of deaths from lunatic gunmen this year.
(Moreover, consider the dollar value of the property that firearms saved from theft.)
Conservatives face this problem all the time: the benefits of their beliefs are large, but widely dispersed.
Apr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
ConservativeWanderer
Cutlass
... lefty response is either:
A) call you a racist
B) backtrack by insisting that we simply have to dosomethingto reduce the amount of guns.
or
C) insist that Mexican guns all come from the US (meaning manufactures, not Eric Holder). · 6 minutes ago
A and B are self-refuting.
C is a bit more difficult to explain to your average lefty who's unused to critical thought ...
Yeah, but arguing C. goes in circles based on economic predictions.
I believe B. is the stronger argument for one to whom guns are simply evil and serve no purpose but to kill people. Of course, if you restrict legal access to guns there will be less of them. This is true of banning anything. Where liberals go wrong is:
1) The presumption that fewer guns will equal less crime. To them, this is just common sense and any statistics to the contrary are funded by the gun lobby.
2) Individuals don't have any right to protect themselves. That's what government is for. The 2nd Amendment is, at best, an arcane irrelevance.
A reasonable person might be persuadable on 1), but 2) seems to be an unbridgeable philosophical difference.
Apr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
I would still be interested in answers to Ferguson's questions for gun advocates.
Particularly when it comes to bans on "assault weapons," machine guns, etc.
I don't know that you can make the same deterrent arguments for certain types of weapons and given that few would allow the proverbial backyard A-bomb there is, as with certain types of speech, a cut-off point somewhere.
Aug '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
I think you are getting that mixed up with the Fred Wilard story.
Feb '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Why did no shooting sprees occur 50 years ago but they occur regularly today? Guns were more available 50 years ago. This kind of violence has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with a number of other, much more serious problems that did not exist before and that liberals do not ever want to face.
Edited on July 22, 2012 at 4:43pmApr '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Cutlass: Particularly when it comes to bans on "assault weapons," machine guns, etc.
I don't know that you can make the same deterrent arguments for certain types of weapons
Yup, you said what I meant better than I did.
I think that the right to own guns extends from the right of self-defense (and hunting, but this is less of an absolute for me). It's hard for me to defend a clip that holds more than 30 rounds on self-defense grounds.
Jun '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Cutlass
Yeah, but arguing C. goes in circles based on economic predictions.
I believe B. is the stronger argument for one to whom guns are simply evil and serve no purpose but to kill people. Of course, if you restrict legal access to guns therewillbe less of them. This is true of banning anything. Where liberals go wrong is:
1) The presumption that fewer guns will equal less crime. To them, this is just common sense and any statistics to the contrary are funded by the gun lobby.
2) Individuals don't have any right to protect themselves. That's what government is for. The 2nd Amendment is, at best, an arcane irrelevance.
A reasonable person might be persuadable on 1), but 2) seems to be an unbridgeable philosophical difference. · 7 hours ago
Actually, it's not that hard to argue 2. Simply point out all of the limousine lefties who have armed bodyguards, and ask why they can defend themselves but John Doe can't.
Kryptonite to a lefty, showing how they love special "rights" for the elites that they don't want to give the "little people."
Dec '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
This might not have happened at all if more people in the state carried guns. In the lunatic's internal calculus, anything we do to punish him after the fact is irrelevant. He wants infamy. He wants the headlines to say "12 killed in theatre shooting" not "lunatic wounds two, gets shot himself".
If this were Texas, he might very well have stayed home, and the data supports that. There's a reason Palestinian terrorists switched from gun attacks to suicide bombs. The Israeli population armed themselves.
Edited on July 22, 2012 at 5:15pmJul '10
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
In situations where law and order breaks down on a large or prolonged scale, such a capability could become necessary. See the shopkeepers in Koreatown during the L.A. Riots for example.
After Hurricane Katrina, my department sent some of us down to help a city PD in Mississippi. I met some people in one of the neighborhoods who had essentially needed to hold their own during and immediately after the storm, when there was effectively no police response available.
Feb '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Ferguson,
Go take a home invasion simulations class, in which you pretend to take on an armed invader (or two) of your house or apartment, and see how many times you want to fire your gun within 5 seconds of grabbing it. I guarantee you that you will go through 5-10 rounds - and unless you are very lucky, you will not have killed the invader. Now see how fast you can re-load while your heart is beating 300 times a minute, you're in low light or darkness, and any second an invader could rush up to you and put a bullet in your head.
A 30-round magazine sounds rather small to me.
More broadly, I'll add that it is not the duty of gun owners to justify the equipment they have.
Finally, no one ever asks whether the police should have 30-round magazines. Doesn't it concern you a little that the police are allowed to buy so much more firepower than other citizens? I consider myself a friend of the police, but I also don't see why citizens should be suspect for wanting to be as well-armed.
Feb '12
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
Cutlass,
Where is the cut-off point for private ownership of arms, you ask. I'll toss out an idea just to start the discussion. I propose that if the arm can be used for self-defense without a likelihood of hurting others nearby, there should be no problem for an ordinary citizen to purchase and own it. If it is more likely than not, if used in the owner's residence, to harm those outside the residence, then we might ask for more detailed information on how and where it will be employed.
Jan '11
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
This dialogue lacks one thing: an actual argument put forth by the opposition, the GCs. We are inventing their case and refuting it, imagining their legislation and voting against it.
But it's all play acting. The national Democrats, including and especially Mr. Obama, have not offered and will not offer a single piece of gun control legislation. They all profess belief in gun control, but they are moral cowards, who believe holding onto office is more important than holding to their convictions, even when, as they sincerely believe, lives are at stake.
Instead of engaging in this political theater the wiser course of action for GPs is to demand that Democrats stop being craven, that they "come up to scratch," and be the profiles in courage they ceaselessly tell us they are. We should do that relentlessly, every day and in every venue, and follow-up their predictable failure to propose legislation with sarcasm, contempt and dismissal.
This isn't Debate Club. The strongest conservative tactic is not to have the best arguments; it is to make Democrats pay for their failures, which are legion.
And why argue with people who are too scared to do anything?
Edited on July 22, 2012 at 11:57pmNov '10
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
This the best thing that I have seen about this:
Dec '10
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
I'm an FFL holder, so I have intimate contact with the law as it applies to guns and their sale.
In answer to your first question, I can tell you that every firearm sold in the US is already in such a list, it is just not centrally stored.
As an FFL holder, I have to fill out a form 4473 for every transaction in which I transfer a non-NFA firearm to a non-licensee (someone who doesn't have an FFL). NFA stuff uses different (more onerous) rules.
Continued . . .
Dec '10
Re: Good-faith Gun Control Questions After a Massacre
This form lists the buyer's: Name, address, SSN/GreenCard Num, physical description, the firearm's serial number, and asks several questions regarding their criminal/mental health record. I then relay this information to the FBI via the NICS (National Instant Check System), after which an agent will give me a PROCEED/HOLD/DENY answer. Most checks go PROCEED/DENY in a matter of seconds, but HOLD results can take up to seven days to resolve.
After the sale is done, regardless of outcome, I am required by law to retain this form forever.
I am also required to search through said records any time that LE asks via a tracing request.
If I go out of the gun business, I must surrender all these forms to the ATF, who will add them to their giant pool of similarly surrendered documents, which they then scan into their database.
Therefore, for all intents and purposes, we already have a distributed national gun registry.
2) Body armor should not be regulated, IMO.
Continued . . .