WTF Is Wrong With America And Gun Control?

[howie105]

Very obvious you thought you were proving some consequential point with your question. You were not.

You are deflecting again please answer my question "So how do you know what I am thinking? Unless you have superpowers and read minds over the Internet you can't."

Correct. It's the way semantics work. If "weapon of war" triggers you, we can call them "weapons of mass murder" since every recent mass murderer has chosen an AR-15. Better?

So if you can't pump the "weapons of war" thing your moving to "weapons of mass murder". thats just as weak. Why not just call them semi automatic rifles, not as evocative but clearer and clarity is good.

Correct. Just like the Parkland and Vegas shooters. They bought their "weapons of mass murder" legally, and shouldn't have been able to. That's the point of this discussion. Expect the gun free-for-all to end soon.

So who put you in charge of deciding what is or is not the point of discussion? Please don't deflect.
This has me confused please explain what this means "gun free-for-all"

 

[Krazy]

The AR-15 is objectively a weapon that makes mass murder too easy...
I want owning an AR-15 or similar weapon to be like obtaining a pilot's license. Training and recertification with a mental health screening.

I agree with all of that and have said so repeatedly. I do have some trepidation on the wats and hows of the mental hygene aspects.

And give me a break over "weapons of war". That's what they are. Vegas was a warzone. Sorry if the term is upsetting. Mass murder generally is.

I take exception to that for 2 reasons:

I'm X military. That was NOT a war zone. Now admittedly thats just me being pissy but words do matter. the Bigger reason I take exception is that it makes it easier for people to ignore your points which I mostly agree with.

 

[Likes2vape]

I think the real issue is mental health and no back ground checks for it in order to buy a gun. I personally know someone who was rejected by the military because of all the anti depressants, adhd meds, and psychotropic drugs he was prescribed but he has no problem buying a gun. How about if the military won’t take you due to mental issues, you can’t own a gun. Oh I wait I forgot that’s discrimination against the mentally ill

AR-15s are just semi automatic rifles so do we ban semi automatic rifles all together or just the AR-15? What about semi auto hand guns, revolvers, shot guns? Do we go back to musket loaders only? The second amendment is to meant for personal protection be it from a person, our own government, or foreign invaders it was not put in place just for hunting rights 100%.

I saw the video. Sure looked like a war zone to me. That is semantics though. That isn't a scene that should play out in a civilized country.

And the shooter didn't need to load up a truck with explosives because he could easily buy an AR-15. That is what we are talking about here. We can't prevent every tragedy. But we can make mass murder more difficult to pull off.

Having speed limits doesn't prevent every accident. But we don't look at that unfortunate fact and say "then fuck it! We shouldn't have traffic laws!"

Read my quote above there does need to be more regulations to get a gun. What it looks like and what it is are two different things.

 

[ZC]

To me, you can only solve this problem (and even then 100% success is not going to happen) with a multi-faceted approach.

Mental health is always brought up, and while it's not irrelevant it's also not really applicable to most of this situations. Mentally ill people are more likely to be the target of a violent crime than an aggressor. There is a difference from having a mental illness and having compromised morals. That said, yeah, our mental health system is severely lacking and more money and infrastructure to help those in need is definitely a step we need to take.

It's been suggested that schools themselves be fortified, which isn't a terrible idea even if it is a very uncomfortable one.

Arming teacher is a terrible idea, they are civilians with enough on their plate. An armed teacher could be confused for the shooter when help arrives. But armed security guards wouldn't be confused for the shooter, and could potentially help providing they don't hide outside like the most recent event.

On a baser level we need more conversation, less alienation. A more accepting environment that listens to people, includes people, instead of this highly volatile environment where people feel alone and outcast if they don't function like those around them. This is the hardest part of the problem to solve, the deep cultural problems that lead to these kinds of outcasts who feel like the best way out is to hurt people.

But you also have to look at guns, how easy they are to access, how promoted and worshipped they are. If you are a gun owner and a gun advocate, it baffles me that you are not pro-gun control, in some respect. We have been pushed so far to the extremes of NO GUNS or NO GUN CONTROL that we can't have an honest discussion about mitigating risk.

Why is being able to own an AR-15 so important when they're routinely being used to kill children? But before we even get to the being able to own part, why can't we just treat responsible gun ownership like a drivers license? A car can be dangerous, so we have to study and take tests and make sure we understand everything, we have to get a license, and then register our cars yearly. It's a good system that promotes responsibility. Guns are not just able to kill like cars, they are DESIGNED to kill.

Then we go back to the second amendment, uninfringed rights to bear arms. But your rights are already infringed, because we have agreed that maybe we shouldn't all be able to own nuclear weapons, or drones that can drop bombs, etc. I'm not going to say the second amendment should be repealed, but I do think we should think critically about why it was written and how that applies to today.

When it was written commonly owned guns were just as good as military guns, you could overthrow a corrupt government with militias as long as you had access to them.

Now, that's not true. No amount of gun-hoarding is going to protect you from our army. You can be as fortified and armed as you want and they can just drop a bomb on you without putting a single US-soldier at risk.

When it was written, we weren't dealing with mass shootings. Now, we have more mass shootings and school shootings than the news has time to report on. We have an epidemic.

It's worth rethinking why and how the second amendment applies to todays world, and more urgently taking at least the very basic steps of limiting access to the weapons most used in these incidents.

Ignoring access to guns as a problem means the mass shooting problem will never be solved.

 

[florduh]

You are deflecting again please answer my question "So how do you know what I am thinking? Unless you have superpowers and read minds over the Internet you can't."

Again. It was obvious. You thought you were proving some consequential point.

So if you can't pump the "weapons of war" thing your moving to "weapons of mass murder". thats just as weak. Why not just call them semi automatic rifles, not as evocative but clearer and clarity is good.

You can call them whatever you want. They are just obviously the mass murderer's weapon of choice in America.

"gun free-for-all"

A gun free for all is our current system, that allows nuts like the Vegas/Parkland shooters to easily obtain AR-15's... making us the only civilized nation on earth with multiple mass shootings every year.

I'm X military. That was NOT a war zone. Now admittedly thats just me being pissy but words do matter. the Bigger reason I take exception is that it makes it easier for people to ignore your points which I mostly agree with.

Fair enough. As a civilian, it looked way more like a warzone than anything concert goers in America should have to contend with. But I take your point.

 

[RalphsBlend]

It was obviously created to kill as many humans as possible, as fast as possible. That is why it is the weapon of choice for mass shooters. If "weapon of war" is too triggering a term, we can come up with something else. But this is irrelevant nonsense.

I don't even think AR's should be banned. I think they should restricted to those who we can be reasonably sure will wield them responsibly. But even that is too big of an ask for the NRA crowd.

Yes, but you are singling out a weapon. The way laws work is you need to define what people can't do. So you still need to define it, for either a ban or strict regulation.

NFA 34 defines what you can't have, and what you need to do if you want to have it. It defines automatic weapons, short-barreled weapons, and sound suppressors, and no dice unless you pay the tax and wait 8 months (I won't go into destructive devices as that's no longer "small arms"). This is easy, weapons that fire more than 1 round per trigger pull, barrels with less than a set length, and devices that reduce sound measurably.

So you want to define the AR-15.
Okay, let's start with manufacturer...okay let's not, because everyone makes one these days, it's as close to an open source weapon as there is.

Okay, what about model...oh wait everyone names it something different.

Caliber? Not really, .223 is a common varmint gun caliber used in bolt action rifles. Also AR-15s can and frequently do use other calibers for various applications from smaller than .223 to as wide as .50.

The only way I could see getting away with it is dimensionally defining an AR 15 by the required tolerances for operation of parts designed for it, but you can see the loophole for that coming a mile away (a new set of unregulated dimensions will be settled on and manufacturing will resume).

California tried this, they have a big old list of shit you can't own. The courts told them it had to be by "make and model", you can't list a "series" of weapon as that's too nebulous, which made the list basically useless. Then they tried banning "features" like the type of grip or muzzle device or type of stock for semi-autos, which was worked around in a matter of years (look up "bullet button AR 15" if interested").

Okay so maybe getting more specific isn't helpful, what about getting less specific?


So what about semi-auto rifles generally?
Well you'll run into a wall with 3 court decisions in all likelihood, and one of them advantages the AR-15 specifically.

First Miller v United States (not the porn one, the less than 18 in barrel shotgun one) brought about "common use" as a measuring stick for whether a weapon merits judicial protections, and the AR-15 has undoubtedly come to be in "common use", I think the fact that it is in "common use" is one of the few things we can agree on.

Next you need to deal with Heller and McDonald, which speak to a broader change in 2nd amendment jurisprudence that recognizes the 2nd amendment is incorporated into the US constitution under due process (meaning the feds can bat down a state's law) as well as movement away from the antiquated "muskets" paradigm which never made sense (remember, just because new tech comes along that doesn't change the meaning of the law, logical consistency dictates that if the internet gets 1A protections, new small arms in common use get 2A protections).



Also be wary of trying to find a way to define the AR-15 as uniquely dangerous, as there's a trap in there. Remember that the M-16 was designed to use rounds that were "good enough" to kill people, not because the rounds or the gun's design were uniquely deadly TO people (they aren't, the .223 is considered a "varmint" round, i.e. fast, flat, and small, designed to shoot prairie dogs).

The M-16 was a logistical calculation based on the changing face of combat at the time:

-Rounds are heavy, if you can carry 60 rounds OR 20 rounds and they both put holes in people with guns trying to kill you, I'll take 60 (which would be the M-16). It doesn't hurt that smaller rounds makes magazine capacity higher at similar magazine size a possibility. This is to say nothing of the supply chain benefits of reduced weight by volume.
-Power leads to recoil, and recoil makes it hard to hit things, an added potential advantage of lower powered rounds.
-Most combat takes place within 600 meters, and engagements at longer distances can be dealt with using other weapons.
-Humans are extremely soft and poorly protected.

Basically, as the AR-15 is just a semi-auto variation of the M-16 design, it's a semi-auto rifle that usually shoots a round with ballistics designed to kill prairie dogs, and it so happens that humans are only somewhat more durable than prairie dogs. You won't find a "too powerful" because its design is the antithesis of "too powerful". It wouldn't even be a reach to say it was designed in response to "weapons of war" being "too powerful".


Just some food for thought.

 

[florduh]

Yes, but you are singling out a weapon. The way laws work is you need to define what people can't do. So you still need to define it, for either a ban or strict regulation.

NFA 34 defines what you can't have, and what you need to do if you want to have it. It defines automatic weapons, short-barreled weapons, and sound suppressors, and no dice unless you pay the tax and wait 8 months (I won't go into destructive devices as that's no longer "small arms"). This is easy, weapons that fire more than 1 round per trigger pull, barrels with less than a set length, and devices that reduce sound measurably.

So you want to define the AR-15.
Okay, let's start with manufacturer...okay let's not, because everyone makes one these days, it's as close to an open source weapon as there is.

Okay, what about model...oh wait everyone names it something different.

Caliber? Not really, .223 is a common varmint gun caliber used in bolt action rifles. Also AR-15s can and frequently do use other calibers for various applications from smaller than .223 to as wide as .50.

The only way I could see getting away with it is dimensionally defining an AR 15 by the required tolerances for operation of parts designed for it, but you can see the loophole for that coming a mile away (a new set of unregulated dimensions will be settled on and manufacturing will resume).

California tried this, they have a big old list of shit you can't own. The courts told them it had to be by "make and model", you can't list a "series" of weapon as that's too nebulous, which made the list basically useless. Then they tried banning "features" like the type of grip or muzzle device or type of stock for semi-autos, which was worked around in a matter of years (look up "bullet button AR 15" if interested").

Okay so maybe getting more specific isn't helpful, what about getting less specific?


So what about semi-auto rifles generally?
Well you'll run into a wall with 3 court decisions in all likelihood, and one of them advantages the AR-15 specifically.

First Miller v United States (not the porn one, the less than 18 in barrel shotgun one) brought about "common use" as a measuring stick for whether a weapon merits judicial protections, and the AR-15 has undoubtedly come to be in "common use", I think the fact that it is in "common use" is one of the few things we can agree on.

Next you need to deal with Heller and McDonald, which speak to a broader change in 2nd amendment jurisprudence that recognizes the 2nd amendment is incorporated into the US constitution under due process (meaning the feds can bat down a state's law) as well as movement away from the antiquated "muskets" paradigm which never made sense (remember, just because new tech comes along that doesn't change the meaning of the law, logical consistency dictates that if the internet gets 1A protections, new small arms in common use get 2A protections).



Also be wary of trying to find a way to define the AR-15 as uniquely dangerous, as there's a trap in there. Remember that the M-16 was designed to use rounds that were "good enough" to kill people, not because the rounds or the gun's design were uniquely deadly TO people (they aren't, the .223 is considered a "varmint" round, i.e. fast, flat, and small, designed to shoot prairie dogs).

The M-16 was a logistical calculation based on the changing face of combat at the time:

-Rounds are heavy, if you can carry 60 rounds OR 20 rounds and they both put holes in people with guns trying to kill you, I'll take 60 (which would be the M-16). It doesn't hurt that smaller rounds makes magazine capacity higher at similar magazine size a possibility. This is to say nothing of the supply chain benefits of reduced weight by volume.
-Power leads to recoil, and recoil makes it hard to hit things, an added potential advantage of lower powered rounds.
-Most combat takes place within 600 meters, and engagements at longer distances can be dealt with using other weapons.
-Humans are extremely soft and poorly protected.

Basically, as the AR-15 is just a semi-auto variation of the M-16 design, it's a semi-auto rifle that usually shoots a round with ballistics designed to kill prairie dogs, and it so happens that humans are only somewhat more durable than prairie dogs. You won't find a "too powerful" because it's design is the antithesis of "too powerful". It wouldn't even be a reach to say it was designed in response to "weapons of war" being "too powerful".


Just some food for thought.

I understand there aren't easy answers. However, the status quo is no longer acceptable to the majority of Americans. I simply want a compromise where owners of anything that could reasonably be considered an "assault weapon" are qualified to safely own them.

That having been said, there is a simpler solution. Every other civilized country has taken that route and don't have multiple mass shootings per year. When another mass shooting inevitably happens in the next few weeks, or months... expect the cry for "bans" to become deafening.

 

[howie105]

I simply want a compromise where owners of anything that could reasonably be considered an "assault weapon" are qualified to safely own them.

So what is the difference in qualifying for a "assault weapon" and qualifying for a weapon of mass murder? Are you shifting positions and definitions?

 

[hafalump]

NRA peeps don't understand compromise.

 

[ZC]

I realize that if we are going to write proper legislation to deal with these things we DO need clear definitions about what we are doing, and that banning particular model numbers is like plugging up one square of a mesh screen, but a lot of the time the focus on semantics and definition is used to distract or dismiss the overall discussion about making a change in how we treat gun ownership.

 

[howie105]

NRA peeps don't understand compromise.

NRA members come in a range of personalities and opinions. Folks are always leaving and joining the NRA over positions and policy.

 

[hafalump]

How about we limit the rounds? Cue the guy to explain why 50 round mags are needed.

 

[CarolKing]

People are asking for help from our law makers to put some common sense gun laws in effect in our Nation. Common sense - not sure what they would be? The status quote is not going to cut it any more.

Thank goodness we are hearing from the Parkland HS students continue to protest. The legislature can’t even bring themselves to make 21 for legal age to buy a gun. I believe that folks will be thinking about this in the next election. Hopefully lawmakers will listen to the needs of their voters.

Some folks have different ideas as to what we feel is safe. Maybe the concert in Las Vegas wasn’t a war zone but many felt it seemed like one. Most of us haven’t been in a war situation. All those rounds of bullets sounded like close to what a snipit of war would be like.

Try to be thoughtful to each other so the thread doesn’t get shut down. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion even if we don’t all agree.

 

[hafalump]

Young kids will vote out these old pasty white republicans, then things begin ....

 

[ZC]

Young kids will vote out these old pasty white republicans, then things begin ....

This is what they were saying when I was first able to vote over a decade ago, and now we have a republican house, senate, and president.

Truth is that young people are raised and shaped by older generations, which means they're imprinted with many of the same ideas. There are plenty of young republicans, and plenty of FAR right young people as we saw very clearly in Charleston. There's a growing nazi movement, mostly growing by young people.

 

[florduh]

So what is the difference in qualifying for a "assault weapon" and qualifying for a weapon of mass murder? Are you shifting positions and definitions?

I use those terms interchangeably. I haven't shifted anything. I'm trying to keep "assault weapons" legal by coming up with creative solutions. Or if you'd like, we can just ban them outright like every other civilized nation has done. But the current system isn't remaining in place for much longer. Wait till our next mass shooting...

Truth is that young people are raised and shaped by older generations, which means they're imprinted with many of the same ideas

True, but a few of the Parkland kids self identify as Republicans. They have made the point that we can put common sense restrictions on our Second Amendment rights just like we do with the First (no shouting "fire in a theater).

 

[Krazy]

How about we limit the rounds? Cue the guy to explain why 50 round mags are needed.

Calico 9mm rifle with 100 round helixel mag.

 

[florduh]

Calico 9mm rifle with 100 round helixel mag.

Why? lol

 

[Krazy]

Because Zombies!

It's actually a very neat weapons system. The mag style is a problem with our current modular rail system though.

From a zombie POV? You need a head shot so accuracy and capacity is way more important than caliber and stopping power.

The Calico also comes in .22lr, the most easily scavenged round. Add a basic laser sight and you can stop an entire horde of the undead with a single mag!

 

[howie105]

So you are willing to license weapons of mass murder? What are the requirements?

 

[florduh]

So you are willing to license weapons of mass murder? What are the requirements?

Yes. I've posted about this several times. It should be similar to obtaining a pilot's license. Mental health screening, comprehensive training, and certifications/re-certs.

That seems more like a well regulated militia than the system we have now, where an insane 18 year old can easily buy an AR-15 and kill 17 people in a few minutes.

 

[CarolKing]

I'm Republican. I Appreciate Assault Weapons. And I Support a Ban. - The New York Times
4 days ago · By BRIAN MAST FEB. ... For example, the purchase of fully automatic firearms is largely banned already, and I cannot purchase an AT-4 rocket, grenades, a Bradley fighting vehicle or

 

[howie105]

Yes. I've posted about this several times. It should be similar to obtaining a pilot's license. Mental health screening, comprehensive training, and certifications/re-certs.

Pilot licenses cost about $5000 to $11000 dollars for the training, depending on what license you are going for.

Mental health screening there is $200 to $400 dollars

Yearly recertification another $200 to $400

incidentals like background checks, actual licenses, range time etc another $200 to $300 or so.

So if my figures are close (honestly I think they are) it could cost in the neighborhood of $5500 and up to meet your model and that effectively prices most folks out of the market. Even if you start slashing corners and you get the price down to $4000 dollars you are still keeping lots of regular people from owning something that has been and is now legal.

 

[ZC]

you are still keeping lots of regular people from owning something that has been and is now legal.

Perfect, that's the goal!

 

[florduh]

Pilot licenses cost about $5000 to $11000 dollars for the training, depending on what license you are going for.

Mental health screening there is $200 to $400 dollars

Yearly recertification another $200 to $400

incidentals like background checks, actual licenses, range time etc another $200 to $300 or so.

So if my figures are close (honestly I think they are) it could cost in the neighborhood of $5500 and up to meet your model and that effectively that prices most folks out of the market. Even if you start slashing corners and you get the price down to $4000 dollars you are still keeping lots of regular people from owning something that has been and is now legal.

I doubt it would be anything close to $4000 per YEAR. But you pay to register your car, for driver's ed, license fees. If you want to own an AR-15 or related weapon... you'll need to pay a little for training, and certification fees.

Don't want to deal with that? Defend your property with a shotgun.

Or, we can just ban them outright. I'd rather avoid that, but you can tell that's the direction we're heading.