The term fits the agenda. It is capable of being molded into whatever meaning they want it to have. It started as a weapon with select-fire capability, and now it is a semi-auto with a 30rd mag. Next it will be any semi-auto.[/quote]
My husband also said that the government can create any legal definition for the term “assault weapon”.
i.e.
If it includes a bayonet,
if it includes a laser,
if it includes a piece of black plastic,
if it fires .223 ammunition, etc…
[quote]someone pages ago wrote:
The government does have the right to…
The government does not have the right to…
[/quote]
Just had to say that Govt’s don’t have rights
People are endowed certain unalienable rights from their Creator
If you believe that then the concept of further gun control is ridiculous - unless you somehow believe it, but disbelieve that self defense is a right
Again. Rights don’t come from govt’s. Not the Constitution. Not the Bill of Rights. It’s just a part of being human. The only way you can take them away is by tricking people that they don’t have them. This concept of even more gun control is ridiculous. It’s evil.
[quote]someone pages ago wrote:
The government does have the right to…
The government does not have the right to…
[/quote]
Just had to say that Govt’s don’t have rights
People are endowed certain unalienable rights from their Creator
If you believe that then the concept of further gun control is ridiculous - unless you somehow believe it, but disbelieve that self defense is a right
Again. Rights don’t come from govt’s. Not the Constitution. Not the Bill of Rights. It’s just a part of being human. The only way you can take them away is by tricking people that they don’t have them. This concept of even more gun control is ridiculous. It’s evil.[/quote]
The “tricking” only works on those that have replaced “their Creator” for “their government” which is, as you said, evil.
[quote]StolyElit wrote:
It doesn’t make sense. We became part of a civilized society so we don’t have to take measures like this. I should not have to be as well armed as our military or police force to defend myself. We pay taxes so these institutions can protect us. Not so I can worry about who I shouldn’t piss off because they may blow a gasket and pull a gun on me. [/quote]
An armed society is a polite one. You should be worried about who you piss off. We all should, in general.
[quote]
We already don’t have an unarmed population… what you are suggesting is that more people stay armed in public. How many more conflicts will turn into to shot outs? People are impulsive and tensions rise greatly when people are known to or likely to be carrying weapons. [/quote]
Do people remain impulsive when their very lives are at stake?
Impulsiveness decreases with tension
[quote]
If you think it is better to live like its the wild west and the only person that can protect you is you that’s great. It would be a step backwards for us to encourage this line of reasoning and would increase the number of fatal conflicts. If you can honestly tell me you would not be afraid or nervous to live in a place were every stranger around you was carrying a fire arm just because you had one too, your either insane, an idiot, or you have spent to much time in a war-zone where this is the norm. [/quote]
Nice touch with the ‘wild west’ bit.
You think it would be a barbaric step backwards for people to be more armed?
I think you’re the barbaric one. I’m serious. Instead of people respecting and watching out for each other, it would be better to constantly intrude their privacy because you fear / distrust them so much? Everyone unarmed is what it takes for you to feel safe? And you call me crazy!?!?!
[quote]
If you think it is better to live like its the wild west and the only person that can protect you is you that’s great.[/quote]Just to make sure it gets through - this is not the argument.
I trust the vast vast majority far more than you do - as long as their lives are on the line, I can trust them.
(Hint: their lives are already on the line)
[quote]
Everyone having a gun all the time is clearly not a solution and we all know it won’t happen. Just the same as we know the government isn’t going to turn around tomorrow and raid every house in America to remove all of our guns. All I am saying is, we can consider removing guns that serve no purpose other than to kill lots of people very quickly.[/quote]
Under this system of law, we cannot even consider this - it is a fraud
Proper gun control is learning how to aim. The other half is just basic self control. If that’s what you were advocating I would be all for it
[quote]StolyElit wrote:
The vast majority of people are unarmed when in public and even if they are armed, they are not walking around with rifles. Why do I have to escalate my ability to rapidly kill an individual just because some asshole can go through his moms closet, pull out a high powered semi-automatic rifle and mow down 20 people before the police can arrive. [/quote]
You don’t! We call it Freedom! You have the choice to defend yourself and those around you, or rely on someone else to defend you if any threat arises. And I don’t mean that sarcastically. Some people don’t feel comfortable carrying a gun, and that’s perfectly alright, but YOU being uncomfortable with guns doesn’t mean I’M uncomfortable with guns and YOUR right not to carry is the same as MY right TO carry.
It does make sense. The civilized society that you chose to become a part of became a civilized society that people want to be a part of because of its armed citizenry.
You don’t need to be armed as well as our military and LEO guys every time you walk out the door to defend yourself or others, so quit with the extremist scenarios.
I, just as all decent people, worry about pissing people off. Not for fear of what they’ll do, but out of general respect and a desire for people to think well of me.
Yes.
No. Tempers tend to stay calmer when people are known to be armed. It’s called self-preservation.
A guy at a party I attended was acting like he was king of the world and could get away with anything. I figured he was packing, so I caught him alone and asked him “you don’t really think you’re the only one here with a gun, do you?”. Complete attitude crash. Turns out I was right, he was carrying, and he thought that gave him the power to act any way he wanted. My “question” cleared and cooled his head so quickly that people were coming up to me asking what I said to him. Which leads me to:
Immature people act impulsive and overly aggressive when carrying. Much like a police officer fresh out of the academy that hasn’t learned the seriousness of his duties, or a 16yo who just got his license and doesn’t quite understand the consequences of inattention. They learn, and the sooner you teach them, the fewer problems you’ll have.
Or maybe you just understand the potential dangers of day-to-day life and have a family to protect?
I live in Alabama. Almost everyone I know packs a pistol, and quite a few are decent operators. It doesn’t make me nervous at all.
Wait a second… there, I considered it. Answer’s ‘no’.
All I am saying is, we can consider removing guns that serve no purpose other than to kill lots of people very quickly.[/quote]
Wait a second… there, I considered it. Answer’s ‘no’.
[quote]StolyElit wrote:
The vast majority of people are unarmed when in public and even if they are armed, they are not walking around with rifles. Why do I have to escalate my ability to rapidly kill an individual just because some asshole can go through his moms closet, pull out a high powered semi-automatic rifle and mow down 20 people before the police can arrive. [/quote]
You don’t! We call it Freedom! You have the choice to defend yourself and those around you, or rely on someone else to defend you if any threat arises. And I don’t mean that sarcastically. Some people don’t feel comfortable carrying a gun, and that’s perfectly alright, but YOU being uncomfortable with guns doesn’t mean I’M uncomfortable with guns and YOUR right not to carry is the same as MY right TO carry.
It does make sense. The civilized society that you chose to become a part of became a civilized society that people want to be a part of because of its armed citizenry.
You don’t need to be armed as well as our military and LEO guys every time you walk out the door to defend yourself or others, so quit with the extremist scenarios.
I, just as all decent people, worry about pissing people off. Not for fear of what they’ll do, but out of general respect and a desire for people to think well of me.
Yes.
No. Tempers tend to stay calmer when people are known to be armed. It’s called self-preservation.
A guy at a party I attended was acting like he was king of the world and could get away with anything. I figured he was packing, so I caught him alone and asked him “you don’t really think you’re the only one here with a gun, do you?”. Complete attitude crash. Turns out I was right, he was carrying, and he thought that gave him the power to act any way he wanted. My “question” cleared and cooled his head so quickly that people were coming up to me asking what I said to him. Which leads me to:
Immature people act impulsive and overly aggressive when carrying. Much like a police officer fresh out of the academy that hasn’t learned the seriousness of his duties, or a 16yo who just got his license and doesn’t quite understand the consequences of inattention. They learn, and the sooner you teach them, the fewer problems you’ll have.
Or maybe you just understand the potential dangers of day-to-day life and have a family to protect?
I live in Alabama. Almost everyone I know packs a pistol, and quite a few are decent operators. It doesn’t make me nervous at all.
Wait a second… there, I considered it. Answer’s ‘no’.
[quote]WSJ wrote:
Americans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.
We aren’t alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.
In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmedâ??as were the policeâ??Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.
Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.
Enlarge Image
David Klein
Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of “good reason” gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.
After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotgunsâ??the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitnessâ??under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.
Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.
The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.
Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: “In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.” Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.
In November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.
Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.
At the time, Australia’s guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom’s. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a “good reason,” Australia required a “genuine reason.” Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasonsâ??personal protection wasn’t.
With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported “a modest reduction in the severity” of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.
What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.
Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” (Harvard, 2002).[/quote]
These types of weapons didn’t exist at the time of our constitutions founding and thus even in regards to the 2nd amendment, I believe the ownership of such weapons needs more discussion.
[/quote]
Read about the French & Indian War then more about the Revolutionary War.
Then read about how standing armys were viewed…
Then think about what you are implying here. You will then come to the conclusion that, without a doubt in my mind, the founders would have included, without question in my mind, todays rifles. All of today’s rifles.
I mean… Come on. I’ve seen this on facebook too, and it is 100% rubbish. The Musket was the “assult rifle” of its day FFS.
I wish I had your patience, Jay.
[/quote]
Thanks for the kind words. It’s not really about patience, I don’t think. It’s a desire to educate and inform, and to encourage reason and logic in handling important issues.
I understand the thought process at work in the good people who want something done in the interest of public safety, and I know they have the best of intentions. I try to encourage a thoughtful look at data such as what Dr. Pangloss just posted, and pose the question “will it really be a benefit to public safety to ban guns?”
We all have the same agenda; to keep people safe. I can’t get angry with people for that. We need to discuss all options and agree to the most effective option at our disposal. I present evidence from the pro-gun standpoint, but I’m more than willing to listen to evidence from other viewpoints as well. It’s just that I have seen absolutely no viable evidence that supports a gun ban being an effective solution.
All her legislation would produce is more bureaucracy and actually dramatically increase the sales of these weapons (up until the bill was enacted). I’m all for intelligent legislation if you could create a higher standard and requirements to own and operate these firearms but generally this kind of thing just means more paperwork and money to fuel more bureaucracy that doesn’t address the real underlying issues.
Liberals whine… and all it does is get more guns into people’s hands than before
the issue that led to the whining…
Conservatives whine…despite the fact that there ends up being 1) no significant impingment on the second Amendment whatsoever and 2) See “Liberals Wine” above.
[quote]JayPierce wrote:
Just to be clear: It’s ok for her to carry, just not for everyone else. “Good for me, but not for thee” - class warfare at it’s finest.
Didn’t watch the video but is she using an “assault” weapon or a gun that would not be affected by her bill? Still some hypocrisy either way.
Liberals whine… and all it does is get more guns into people’s hands than before
the issue that led to the whining…
Conservatives whine…despite the fact that there ends up being 1) no significant impingment on the second Amendment whatsoever and 2) See “Liberals Wine” above.
So…what exactly is everyone whining about?
Mufasa
[/quote]
What do you consider “significant impingment on the second Amendment”
[quote]StolyElit wrote:
First I just want to question the ownership of certain types of guns. Regardless of the argument as to what currently falls under the category of legally own able assault rifles in the US. Of the plethora of guns available for purchase I am confident that many serve no practical purpose other than to engage a large number of other well armed people in some form of paramilitary action.
These types of weapons didn’t exist at the time of our constitutions founding and thus even in regards to the 2nd amendment, I believe the ownership of such weapons needs more discussion. If we can all agree that a civilian should not have an automatic or burst fire enabled weapon, then I believe there are a number of other currently legal weapons we can all agree should be removed from the pool of available firearms. The way to accomplish such an action is a much more involved and hard question.
Beyond that, I would like to know how much money is being allocated to weapons control or detection. Surely more advances have been made that could boost law enforcement response time or safely disable or deter armed assailants. Perhaps there could be automated safety systems which can one day be made affordable in schools and public venues that would help ensure the impossibility of gun violence on our unarmed population.
[/quote]
I don’t think any firearm really exists solely to engage a large amount of armed people, not that the average person could buy. You can’t exactly go out and buy a m249. Firearms have a wide range of capabilities and one bought for civilian use with the intentions of engaging multiple armed targets would most likely be a misuse of the product.
If you go back to the time of the constitution you’ve a different era of a firearms. But the firearms used by the military then weren’t really any different than what the average person could buy. I think in this era there’s a greater distinction between a firearm for civilian use and one for military use. You can’t buy a m4 with a m203 attached to it.
If you look at a country like England there’s still gun violence and fatal shootings. There’s also fatal stabbings. Is there a violent knife culture in England? No, people just have a propensity for violence and violence is inevitable in human life. It really comes down to being people problem more than anything.
What I think this debate really boils down to is the fact that our government has lept and bound around the Constitution to the point where there is very little effort by our government to ignore it if they want to. Congress makes taxes not Obama, Congress declares war not Bush, etc etc etc… Our government does what it wants to, it has become the aborant, vile beast the Founders warned against, fought to be free from and tried to prevent here.
The Bill of Rights is one of the last scripts that stands in the way of tyranny, and with every fast talking loose nut werido that passes, it becomes more and more just an ideal rather than an enforced rule of law.
There is a reason it is the second and not the eighth. It is one of the last symbols of what all those brave men, women and children died for. We owe what bits of freedom we have left to an armed citizenry, a population that reminded government that it is “by the people, for the people” not “what the president says”.
So one side argues because they are lazy thinkers, and the other because they love America, love her dream, love what she is, was and could be. And I know it bothers some to admit the fact that America is, and always has been, a man standing, with rifle in one hand and money in the other, freedom clenched between his teeth, but it is true.
SOme people just don’t want to give up and fall as fast into the abyss as others.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
What do you consider “significant impingment on the second Amendment”[/quote]
A restriction of the natural right to defend myself, in this particular case, by use of firearm.
