Emily Got Her Gun

[benEzra]

43. If I may point out...

"What I said was that most of the gun control orgs are engaged in other efforts, efforts that have a chance of making a difference. Anyone who is serious about gun control realizes Assault Weapons can't be banned because they cannot be properly defined and any definition can usually be overcome with minor design changes.

And yet those gun control orgs rammed through a harshly punitive "assault weapon" ban in 2013 in Maryland, did they not? Putting a protruding handgrip on a new Ruger Mini-14 in your state is now a serious crime. Your new ban not only outlaws the most popular target rifles in America, it even outlaws Olympics-style target pistols (Hammerli, Benelli, etc.) due to the forward mounted magazine.

http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2013RS/bills/sb/sb0623f.pdf

I have yet to read of a gun control organization saying such bans are wrong or misguided or should be opposed, just sometimes that they're not practical nationwide "yet" so they're not a priority "for now". Bloomberg's Everytown organization, the Brady Campaign, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center have all made it quite clear that such bans are a legislative priority, and they ram them through every chance they get (as in Maryland), even though rifles are consistently the least misused of all weapons nationwide.

You are correct that magazine bans are a separate issue, and one likely to spur even more backlash (since >10-round magazines are used in many, many more firearms than semiauto rifles), but they are often introduced alongside aesthetic/ergonomic feature bans and are equally pointless.

"Yes, I've had experience with Maryland's "peaceable gun-owners." To pick just one instance, a co-worker - a PG County resident - was told by his supervisor that his work was sub-standard and that he was headed for a PIP. Said worker didn't take it well, threatened his supervisor and then went back to his cubicle, called the gun dealer he deals with, and asked about purchasing a specific pistol and ammunition. Fortunately a co-worker overheard him and alerted security. He didn't deny it. They escorted him out of the building and fired him. He's still out there somewhere and I'm sure his supervisor spent a few very nervous months before he felt safe again. "

If he were calling a gun dealer to ostensibly buy a gun in order to commit a crime, doesn't that imply that he didn't already own same?

Even if your perception of him as a gun enthusiast were correct, though, how is stereotyping 80+ million people by the actions of your former coworker any different from stereotyping any other group by the actions of a tiny minority of bad apples? Gun-violence perpetrators skew very heavily (>90%) toward people with long records of participation in violent crime and impulse-control issues. At the other end of the spectrum, concealed carry licenses are a decent statistical proxy for gun enthusiasts, and in most states that track crimes by CCW holders, our per-capita rate of violent crime tends to be far lower than the population at large, and usually even lower than that of LEO's. That's not to excuse any wrongdoing by anyone, but if your aim is to reduce violent crime and save lives, it seems to me that focusing on those who are not the problem isn't going to help one iota, and will actually be counterproductive due to diversion of resources and political capital away from more productive approaches.