benEzra
benEzra's JournalSee, after all that hate, you come up with one proposal there could actually be common ground on.
If they could be done sans registration and without hassle, rather than trying to force everything through BATFE 4473's, then there are probably was to do implement UBC that both sides could agree on. It could have been done in 1994, except the Third Way launched the Protruding Handgrip and Magazine Crusade instead.
You are aware that AR's and whatnot are legal in most of Europe and Canada, yes?
You might even could have gotten licensing, in an alternate universe where licensing wasn't used as a means to routinely deny ownership, and where you hadn't made things NFA and then closed the NFA registry. In the current universe, no. We see how you treat carry licensure, and the NY SAFE Act shows where Bloomberg et al want to go.
The murderer who committed the worst mass shooting *ever* (in Norway) used a straight-stocked hunting rifle:
Still not as bad as the recent attack in France with the moving truck, but it goes to show that handgrip shape is irrelevant, as are forward grips (I don't use a foregrip on my USPSA competition rifle, FWIW, though they might be handy shooting from prone). And you're talking 10-round magazines, not 5; the Virginia Tech shooter used two pistols and a backpack full of mostly 10-rounders, I think. And the Texas Tower shooter used a rifle with a 4-round magazine, did he not?
The thing is, unless you ban *all* repeating firearms, and all easily reloadable firearms, and actually make them vanish rather than driving them underground, it's irrelevant.
That also begs the question of why you are focusing on the *least* prevalent instances of gun homicide (mass shootings involving rifles), while failing to address the most prevalent: drug-prohibition-driven conflicts between criminal enterprises. Of the 500+ murders in Chicago this year, almost all involve illegally possessed handguns, not rifles of any type. And I suspect the most-misused handguns aren't the full-sized, full-capacity, hard-to-conceal ones targeted by mag bans, but the smaller, more concealable ones. Meanwhile, rifle homicide is now at historic lows.
If you are trying to fight gun violence, then attacking the peaceable and nonviolent is not a viable path forward, IMO.
Ha, you are psychic.
One post down from yours and 25 minutes later, the ZOMG GUN OWNERS ARE RACISTS!! card came out. We could take bets on how soon the penis card will be played.
Typical gun control conversation, as seen on Facebook/Twitter/forums:
Gun owner: I think mentally competent adults with clean records should be able to lawfully own and use non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed civilian firearms under .51 caliber, plus shotguns.
Gun control advocate: Racist penis-compensating rural hick fucktard NRA dupe.
Gun owner: The FBI says rifles are used in less than 270 murders out of nearly 14,000 each year.
Gun control advocate: NRA-talking-point-spewing ignorant racist ammosexual scum.
Gun owner: You know, telling 80-100 million people you hate them every election isn't a good election strategy.
Gun control advocate: That's what all you racist penis-compensating bloodthirsty gun humpers say. Oh BTW, please vote for my favored candidate, kthanxbai!
"Tens of thousands" aren't killed by the guns you want to ban; less than 150 are.
And of those, not a single one would be saved by requiring rifles to have stocks like this:
[img][/img]
http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/specSheets/5802.html
instead of like this:
https://www.remington.com/rifles/modern-sporting/model-r-15/model-r-15-vtr-predator-moe-16-1/2
or like this:
http://www.ruger.com/products/sr22Rifle/specSheets/11134.html
Nor would any lives be saved by declaring common magazines verboten.
Nor would any lives be saved by telling carry license holders that we can't carry in restaurants with wine lists, or whatever.
Stuff like that isn't about preventing violence. Not in the slightest.
Yep, there is. There is also a temporary forum for discussing things that hurt Dems last month...
which would be this forum.
I live in North Carolina, which was a notable swing state this election. Perhaps you've heard of it.
The gun issue was big here in 2016. And 2014, when Hagan lost her Senate seat over it. I grew up here, though I lived in Florida for a decade in between, and I have some passing familiarity with both states...
This is *exactly* the type of misunderstanding that is so harmful to Dems on this issue.
Do you personally want to possess military-style weaponry for home use? Expecting an invasion from some place? Belong to the National Guard? (If I understand the situation correctly, the State National Guards all keep their weaponry in armories, as do the various military services, not in homes.)
This is *exactly* the type of misunderstanding that is so harmful to Dems on this issue; I am talking about the most common civilian (NFA Title 1, non-automatic) rifles in U.S. homes.
AR-15's are legal for civilians to own in Canada, most of Europe, and New Zealand, and are no more and no less "military-style" than a Winchester Model 70 bolt-action or a Winchester 1866 lever-action. The fact that they are restricted in CA/NY/MA, the UK, and Australia doesn't mean that they aren't mainstream civilian guns.
And no, I'm a competitive shooter in local USPSA-sanctioned matches and derivatives. I shoot a civilian non-automatic Rock River LAR-15, made in Illinois. Like most AR's, mine is a centerfire .22 (.223 Remington)---low-powered, low recoil, and supremely accurate.
The National Guard uses NFA Title 2 restricted machineguns like the M16, which would be a 10-year Federal felony for me (or you) to possess without proper authorization.
As for California, where you correctly surmise I live
You live in a state whose laws match your beliefs. That works for you.
Just please stop trying to impose your laws on the ~43 states that have explicitly rejected them over and over and over and over----if for no other reason than that it hurts Dems nationwide.
FWIW, rifles are the *least* misused category of weapon in the United States; many states have no rifle homicides at all in any given year, and most are in the single digits.
Murder, by State, Types of Weapons, 2015
[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 13,455
Handguns............................ 6,447 (47.9%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,648 (19.7%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,671 (12.4%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,544 (11.5%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 624 (4.6%)
Shotguns.............................. 269 (2.0%)
Rifles................................ 252 (1.9%) [/font]
I could go on. I'm not trying to disarm everyone in the country.
If you're trying to take CA-banned rifles and CA-banned magazines from the 60+ million people who own them nationwide, then you are trying to disarm the majority of gun owners, to that degree.
About 20% of gun owners hunt; 80% don't. Many hunters also own nonhunting guns that the gun control lobby wishes to criminalize. And for those in the NY/CA bubble who are wondering how any Dem or indie could possibly sit this one out, there is one of many explanations for it.
That was understood as pandering to the zealots; he made no real moves against gun owners.
The indiscriminate, hate-filled exploitation of the tragedy at Sandy Hook was when the "banic" occurred, when store shelves were cleared of ammo and AR production backlogged for a year, and when the die was cast for the loss of the Senate in 2014. And I would say that it wasn't Obama who was really responsible for it; it was mostly the corporate media (hate sells, via rageclicks and rage-shares on social media), plus a few hateful sound bites and draconian legislative proposals from a small set of Senate and House members, but mostly gun control activists on social media---and of course the NY SAFE Act. All I remember Obama actually doing was to express his dislike for people owning modern-looking guns, and much later the BATFE floating a half-baked proposal to ban M855 ammo that was later withdrawn as unworkable; the rest was basically restating and pledging to enforce existing law.
And the NRA is ~5 million members, compared to 12-15 million carry license holders, ~25-30 million "assault weapon" owners, ~60 million "high capacity magazine" owners, and ~100 million gun owners. What the NRA thinks, says, or does is not nearly as important to grassroots gun rights activism as gun-control activists seem to think.
You do realize I'm not an NRA member, right?
Were the NRA to disappear tomorrow, the gun control landscape wouldn't change in the slightest. You'd still run squarely against the fact that tens of millions of engaged, thoughtful, and highly motivated Americans own guns, and will keep them. You can accept that fact and look for common ground with the people you seem to hate but (realistically) have to coexist with, or the party can keep supporting useless, offensive crap like handgrip and magazine bans and carry-license harassment, and keep getting the same pushback.
The Third Way has been pushing to outlaw rifle handgrips for a frakking quarter century now, and so far they have achieved:
-- Mostly-ignored cosmetic bans in ~7 states, despite extreme penalties;
-- Record gun and ammo sales nearly every year for the last two decades;
-- Modern-looking rifles now dominate rifle ownership and the shooting sports;
-- Half a billion over-10-round magazines in U.S. homes;
-- Republican control of most state legislatures;
-- Republican control of the House and Senate;
-- President Trump.
Quite a track record. On the upside, rifle violence is now at historic lows...
I'm not a Repub, and legislating rifle stock shape doesn't prevent suicides.
Neither does mandating pre-1860s magazine capacities, or restricting licensed carry in restaurants with wine lists, all of which are complete non-issues.
So I ask again: Why the intense focus on harassing the peaceable and nonviolent, rather than addressing the actual problem areas? Namely, drug prohibition fueled violence, and people without pain management, mental health care, or hope?
I'll also point out that discouraging/barring gun owners from getting counseling for depression, or stigmatizing depression with felony-class criminal penalties like rights revocation, would *increase* suicides, not decrease it.
If carry prohibitions were limited to actual carry while at a bar/drinking, or carry while impaired,
then they wouldn't be controversial. The showdown comes when gun control advocates want prohibit carry by nondrinkers in restaurants with wine lists (or all restaurants, or all stores, or all churches, or whatever), and that is irrational and counterproductive.
Here in NC, it is illegal to carry while drinking, but you can carry in restaurants with wine lists (we had to fight the fundamentalists tooth and nail to get that changed). In Florida, it is illegal to carry in a an actual bar (e.g., an establishment that derives most of its income from alcohol sales), or at a bar in a restaurant with a bar.
Once again, it comes down to nuance, rather than fundamentalist attempts at prohibition. There is common ground if you look for it.
Guns in schools, guns in nursing homes, guns in day care centers, shoot first/stand your ground: all are stupid permissions.
Guns in schools: The biggest issue there whether to make it a felony to pick up your kid from school if you have a carry license, even if you don't get out of the car; such laws are irrational and counterproductive. Here in NC, the rule is that you stay in the car; I don't see protests in the street over it. As to guns actually *in* the school, if you are talking about by trained, vetted school staff, I don't see the problem; we already allow that with SRO's, and it often saves lives in the unlikely event of an attack; if you're concerned about training and quals, let's discuss training and quals.
Guns in nursing homes. When I used to go visit my grandmother in her nursing home before she passed away this year, I probably was carrying. I certainly don't see any rational basis for drawing the gun in the parking lot to stash it in the car, any more than I'd take out my Swiss Army Knife to stash it in the car before going to see her. It's not like I was walking into a prison; it was her home.
Guns in day care centers. Where, and under what circumstances? Parents dropping off their kids? I haven't seen this one.
Stand your Ground laws. Ummm, you do realize that two thirds or more of the USA, including your gun-ban utopia of California, are "Stand Your Ground" states by case law, yes? Florida got in the news about it only because it was an oddball that *wasn't* Stand Your Ground, and changed its law to match that of most states after some high-profile malicious prosecutions of victims.
"Shoot first." You are only allowed to shoot if you are in actual imminent, unlawful danger of death or serious bodily harm, or a forcible felony, as would be perceived by a reasonable person in that situation; if you are, there is no requirement to wait to be shot or stabbed first, and this is the case in all 50 states. In almost all states, there is also a presumption of justifiability if you are the victim of a unlawful home invasion (or in some states, an unlawful carjacking); that rule predates the NRA by centuries, being one of the foundations of Western case law. It is called the "Castle Doctrine" for a reason.
And, all this circles back to the bigger question: Why are you so intent on going after trained, vetted, and licensed people with squeaky clean records who are lawfully carrying in restaurants, or while picking up their kids from school, when approximately zero murders per year out of 13,500 involve those circumstances?
The overwhelming majority of murders occur in the course of prohibition-funded criminal enterprise, and the majority of gun deaths are suicides by people who need access to pain management, mental health care, or hope, not jail. Going after licensed carry, rifle handgrips, post-1860 magazines, etc. does *nothing* to address any of that.
Well, you could go after misuse, rather than responsible ownership.
The problem is that the DC/NY policy setters are doing exactly the opposite.
How much of LA's gun violence is caused by criminal enterprises funded by drug prohibition, vs. how much is carried out by working-class and middle-class families with clean records? In Chicago, over 90% of murderers (and ca. 50% of victims) have prior crimes on their record, and probably less than two thousand criminals are responsible for almost all of the violence.
Less than 2% of murders involve any kind of rifle, so why is the party throwing away election after election (both high level and downballot) trying to legislate rifle handgrip shape? Carry license holders have something like 1/10th the violent crime rate of the population at large, and less than half that of the *police*. Why spend so much political capital going after them? Such measures are not only useless at preventing violence, they are worse than useless; they tie up police resources going after the nonviolent, they destroy lives, and they destroy any chance for common-ground measures that might actually help address misuse without restricting rights.
There is common ground to be found. Things that come to mind right off:
End drug prohibition, make it a medical issue rather than a criminal one, and take away the profits that fund the cartels and gangs. (Is everyone too ignorant of U.S. history to remember the lessons of alcohol prohibition?) Then take all the law enforcement resources you free up, and get back to community policing and the Peelian basics.
When you catch violent criminals with guns, actually prosecute them, instead of plea-bargaining the gun charges away; as it stands now, the innocent homeowner who accidentally runs afoul of some arcane gun law is the *only* person likely to get a decade-long sentence on a gun charge, because they don't have other charges to plead to and don't have criminal higher-ups to testify against.
Accidents are already at historic lows. If you want to help discourage the few that still happen, how about a tax credit for UL-listed gun safes; as long as there is NO coercive angle, it would be a benefit and would probably be well received, and would help reduce both accidents and theft.
Work out a common-ground way to do universal background checks *without* hassle or registration. That does not mean forcing all private transfers through a FFL or third party.
There are undoubtedly other areas of common ground to be found as well, but to find them, you have to understand the basics of the issue, and most of the leadership in the DC/NY/CA bubble don't even begin to comprehend it.
Thank you!! I was looking for your post in the old DU archives, but wasn't able to find it.
Excellent post, and very relevant then and now.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Eastern North Carolina
Home country: United States
Current location: Eastern NC
Member since: Wed Dec 1, 2004, 04:09 PM
Number of posts: 12,148
