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Spetulhu wrote:
I mean - your drugs come from Mexico but the illegal guns the Mexican drug cartels use, well, 70% of them are brought in from the USA.

That seems very, very unlikely. I will agree that most of the guns that the Mexican government submits for tracing show a US origin, but that's because.... surprise, they only produce the guns suspected to have originated in the US for tracing. All of the AK's with Romanian or Bulgarian manufacture marks are never submitted which really, really throws that figure off. If I recover a cache of guns that consist of 40 Kalashnikovs and 3 AR-15s with lowers from Spike's Tactical, and I ask the US to trace the 3 AR-15s, it's going to show 100%.

No one can definitively say what percentage of arms in Mexico originated in the US, but whenever you see one of those "drugs on the table" photo ops and you see stuff like M203 grenade launchers and hand grenades, you should be suspicious.

Common sense says given the choice between relatively expensive semiautomatic weapons purchased in the US and smuggled over the border and then slowly and laboriously converted to full auto, or just getting fully-automatic weapons from El Salvador or the Mexican Army for the price of a chicken each.... I'm going to presume the latter.


As a side note, I'm not sure that conflicts in a different country are a sound basis for curtailing our rights.

Spetulhu wrote:
The gun show part might not actually be a very big thing, but the way straw purchases can be made is IMO not good even if you think the 2nd Amendment is the next best thing after the Bible (or better). Over here I can pretty much buy any gun I want (kk, not full-auto) but the thing is firmly registered on me and if I'm selling it on the new owner needs to pass the same background checks.

Here's the problem. How do you prove a straw purchase before the gun is used in a crime?

 Breotan wrote:
Here's the problem. How do you prove a straw purchase before the gun is used in a crime?

You can't, really, unless someone is stupid enough to brag about it in front of witnesses. But how many people are going to risk making a straw purchase if the gun they're buying is permanently registered in their name (with no "I sold it to a friend, no background check or paperwork required" excuse available) and will leave clear evidence of an illegal sale if it is used in a crime? The more you take away plausible deniability the less likely it is that people will be willing to participate in an illegal sale.

 Breotan wrote:
Here's the problem. How do you prove a straw purchase before the gun is used in a crime?

Right, there I must admit I have no idea. We actually have few of those straw purchases because a) it's laborious to secure a permit and b) illegal guns are somewhat easy to get anyway with Russia next door. If someone uses a legally purchased gun in a crime here it's either his own gun or it belongs to his daddy etc - and that is usually a long gun meant for hunting. Only bikers and drug dealers get pistols, and few of them do it the legal way.

A straw purchase here (just going with how people get other stuff they shouldn't have) is most likely a drunk being used, and he really shouldn't pass the process to begin with since he'll probably smell of alcohol when he comes to tell the police how he wants to buy a gun.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The big issue with the background checks is that for people engaged in small scale trading or personal sales, they simply don't have access to the background check system, and would have to go to an FFL (on a day they're open and during business hours), pay both the FFL for doing the check and the state (since the state charges a fee each time), in order to conduct a transaction, which, in many places, can be both very time consuming and expensive. If you're Yokel Farmer Bob and want to sell your old .22 to your neighbor Jimbo to give to his son Billy-Bob, having to drive two counties over to the nearest gun store for an $80 transaction, pay the state $10 and the FFL their cut (usually something like $25), that gets...well...quite irritating. Likewise, if you're at the gun show buying an old Mosin or a K-98 from the WW2 collectibles booth and the guy sells like 12 guns a year, the firearms are really a side niche in view of the larger gig the guy is engaged in. That's why the "loophole" was specifically written into the law in the first place, it was intentional, for stuff like that.

So fix the background check system. It's 2015 and the whole thing is just an online yes/no check anyway. Make a public site where a person can, for free, request a "permission to buy" code that they can give to the seller (who can then verify its legitimacy through the same site). That gets rid of the "personal sale to a friend" excuse and removes any reason for it to be legal to sell a gun without going through the background check process.

That's a very different route one would have to take, with a complete redesign of the existing infrastructure, both legal and IT. Possible, but a much larger problem. If such issues were solved, sure, that would make it far more convenient.

Not to move goalposts too far, but there's also the idea that the Federal Government shouldn't be involved in individual personal property matters, which also drives much of the allowance for personal sales to avoid background checks. There's some merit to that line of thinking as well. I don't have a firm position on that myself one way or the other, I don't intend to sell any of my firearms really and I don't generally buy firearms from individuals so I don't have a huge stake in the issue, but these are concerns that exist and that people vote on.

 greatbigtree wrote:
An individual's rights need to be limited by the rights of others. My rights end where another's begin. It should not be a right, to possess a firearm capable of killing indiscriminately from long range, in rapid succession. There is no greater good served by allowing the general populace to possess such weaponry.

The right to keep and bear arms is not predicated on any particular level of killing power, nor the capability of the United States Military. Ultimately, such weaponry absolutely serves a purpose in the national defense (look at how people with largely nothing but rifles and low tech explosives have forced the eventual withdrawal, or made further occupation undesireable, of far greater powers from places like Afghanistan and Iraq). An armed and agitated populace is an unconqerable one. The US has not always had a global-power level military, and in several cases where it has in the past, it drew them down drastically again (e.g. after the US civil war and after WW1 and such a time may come again.

More fundamentally, the weapons you're talking about are basically almost never used to do what you describe, when you look at the actual number of deaths at the hands of these weapons, they're statistically irrelevant, and even when they are used, the number of dead isn't really particularly any different than with other incidents using ostensibly less "dangerous" weapons. The Austin Belltower shooter used primarily a bolt action rifle to kill 16 people and wound over 30 more, the guys at Columbine used a shotgun and handguns, the all time worst massacre in the US at Virginia Tech was carried out with handguns with 15 and 10 round capacities.

Any more than it would be reasonable for the general populace to possess grenades, or dynamite.

It wasn't that long ago that it was possible to go into a hardware store and buy dynamite without any regulation, IIRC the 1970's? For things like blowing up old tree stumps and things of that nature. Stuff was almost wholly unregulated for about a century, didn't seem to have any major issues.

Rapid fire, high capacity WEAPONS are intended, specifically, to kill lots of people in a short time. For war, in other words.

So was basically just about every bolt action rifle when originally designed. Nobody wants to talk about banning something like a Mosin-Nagant or an SMLE or a K98 rifle, or the thousands of other firearms based on such designs, despite being expressly designed as military weapons of war. They have other uses. Just like civilian equivalents do. Weapons like AR-15's & AK's and the like are widely used in sport and competition shooting (in fact, at the top end of 3-gun competition shooting, you'll see just about every competitor with an AR of some sort). They are used for hunting quite often (things like feral hogs/wild boar, coyotes, etc). Civilian legal versions of submachineguns make truly excellent home defense weapons. There's gobs of non-war related uses for these items, and, more fundamentally, just because they're designed for war doesn't mean that civilians shouldn't have access to them.

They should be treated like grenades. You wouldn't use a grenade for anything other than killing people, in any reasonable sense. You wouldn't use an... I don't know... AK-47? for anything but killing people, either.

Boar hunting, home defense, some competition shooting, all sorts of things.

You could use it for hunting, but that would be substantially overkill. If you don't get the kill in two shots, you've lost your opportunity when hunting.

Depends on what you're hunting. If you're hunting a deer, sure, though such a weapon also affords you greater follow up opportunity for that second shot than something like a bolt action rifle. If you're doing something like culling feral pigs (a big, and increasing, ecological problem across much off the US), such weapons make perfect sense.

Slower fire, low capacity FIREARMS are intended, specifically, for hunting game. For survival, in other words. They are less suitable for killing people, as the available ammunition is in shorter, less sustainable supply. I wouldn't take an over-under shotgun to war. I'd want an... again, not a big follower of assault weapons... AK-47? They seem to get the job done well enough.

The US 2nd amendement was never intended just to protect hunting weapons. Back then, your hunting gun was the gun you grabbed when you went to war.

"But it's my Right!" perhaps, but it shouldn't be. That right does not bring about the greatest good, and eventually removes the right of innocent persons to live, given a long enough time-span. It is eventual. Restricting such deadly arms limits that potential, and serves a greater good.

This exact line of thinking can be used to attack any right, and the "greatest good" is, well, nebulous, and often in the eye of the beholder. Don't like people saying mean things? Well, that 1st amendment is no longer in the greatest good. Not getting information out of criminal suspects fast enough? Well those 4th amendment protections are no longer in the greatest good. It's very easy to attack each and every right in this manner.

 Breotan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, the 2nd amendment was assuming there wouldn't be a disparity in armament.

*Citation needed*

Private ownership of anything up to and including cannons and navel warships and private military regiments were very common at the time.

It was common practice for some regiments to be owned by their commanding officers. The government would then pay the officer an amount per soldier in his regiment, which was to cover the equipment, training, and a little extra for the officer to make a profit(it was also common for there to be a few fake soldiers in the regiment, so the officer could pocket some extra cash).

Similarly, ships were often privately owned. Privateers were one of the principle ways you waged war at sea, and a single warship would often have more cannons than entire armies on land. The Constitution still has specific language regarding the recruitment of Privateers in it as well.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, the 2nd amendment was assuming there wouldn't be a disparity in armament.

*Citation needed*

Private ownership of anything up to and including cannons and navel warships and private military regiments were very common at the time.

It was common practice for some regiments to be owned by their commanding officers. The government would then pay the officer an amount per soldier in his regiment, which was to cover the equipment, training, and a little extra for the officer to make a profit(it was also common for there to be a few fake soldiers in the regiment, so the officer could pocket some extra cash).

Similarly, ships were often privately owned. Privateers were one of the principle ways you waged war at sea, and a single warship would often have more cannons than entire armies on land. The Constitution still has specific language regarding the recruitment of Privateers in it as well.

I think you're confusing "possible" with "common."

Until the Civil War, gun ownership was not nearly as common as you make it seem. especially at the time of the Revolutionary War. Normal people definitely didn't just have cannon laying about in their houses either.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, the 2nd amendment was assuming there wouldn't be a disparity in armament.

*Citation needed*

Private ownership of anything up to and including cannons and navel warships and private military regiments were very common at the time.

It was common practice for some regiments to be owned by their commanding officers. The government would then pay the officer an amount per soldier in his regiment, which was to cover the equipment, training, and a little extra for the officer to make a profit(it was also common for there to be a few fake soldiers in the regiment, so the officer could pocket some extra cash).

Similarly, ships were often privately owned. Privateers were one of the principle ways you waged war at sea, and a single warship would often have more cannons than entire armies on land. The Constitution still has specific language regarding the recruitment of Privateers in it as well.

I think you're confusing "possible" with "common."

Until the Civil War, gun ownership was not nearly as common as you make it seem. especially at the time of the Revolutionary War. Normal people definitely didn't just have cannon laying about in their houses either.

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1489&context=wmlr

This study seems to indicate firearm ownership was very common.

The first "gun control" law that was passed was in Georgia, trying to ban handguns. The Supreme Court overturned it. The next serious attempt was aimed at restricting black Americans from owning firearms in the south, with took place just after emancipation. It wasn't until the 20th century that our government started trying to seriously regulate firearms.

So yes, our Founders had no intention of restricting what could, and could not be, owned. Our nation was about 150 years old before any serious restrictions (automatic weapons) came down. That was about a full 60 years after automatic weapons truly came into being.

 d-usa wrote:
Again, I'll type it slowly do maybe it's easier to understand.

It's the "gun show" loophole because it allows a buyer who cannot purchase firearms to walk into a single place, look at a large inventory of firearms, and walk back out minutes later without having to undergo any sort of background check.

1) Not a loophole, it is a feature of the law. Repeatedly calling it a loophole does not make it so.
2) The feature of the law is to protect private sellers not in the business of selling firearms. Whether or not those private sellers sell their firearm at a gunshow or elsewhere this protection is in place.
Therefore it is neither specific to a gunshow, nor is it a loophole

 d-usa wrote:
The reason criminals use gun shows rather than classifieds is that it is quicker and more convenient, same as most other persons that use them.

Most recent study from inmates in Chicago showed that most get their weapons from people that they know or have an existing relationship with
https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfront.net/sharedmedia/1508093/ccjstudy.pdf
https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/276724037

Study from 1997 stated that 2% of criminal's weapons came from gun shows - http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/facts-about-gun-shows

So if it is "quicker and more convenient" why do so few criminals get their guns from there?

 d-usa wrote:
The other reason criminals use gun shows is because for them it had all the benefits of going to a regular gun store with none of the background checks. That's the loophole.

Still not a loophole.

 d-usa wrote:
Seriously, the only thing dumber than most of the crap proposed by gun control advocates is the trash that gets repeated by gun advocates, including here on Dakka. Heck, just these past few weeks we have had "all .308 are alike, there is no high-power or low-power ammo" which was easily disproven by a single chart from a single manufacturer and which we all know wasn't true to begin with because we look at the damn box when we buy ammo to see what the load is, we have had "gun ownership is up and suicide rates are down" which was disproven by a simple look at actual facts, and now we have people pretending that the gun show loophole isn't s thing.

Complete non-sequiter. It does not follow that because one person was wrong on .308 rounds that your inability to accept the facts as they relate to private sales is null and void. The alleged gunshow loophole has been disproven on the facts. Can we stop pretending that it is a thing?

 d-usa wrote:
Want anti-gun folks to stop thinking of us gun owners as idiots? We could start by not repeating idiotic things.

Like claiming that there is a loophole that does not exist?

 greatbigtree wrote:
An individual's rights need to be limited by the rights of others. My rights end where another's begin. It should not be a right, to possess a firearm capable of killing indiscriminately from long range, in rapid succession. There is no greater good served by allowing the general populace to possess such weaponry. Any more than it would be reasonable for the general populace to possess grenades, or dynamite.

So the greater good is being served by massively undercutting the rights of millions of law abiding citizens because of ~300 deaths per year? That is in no pay proportionate

 greatbigtree wrote:
Rapid fire, high capacity WEAPONS are intended, specifically, to kill lots of people in a short time. For war, in other words. They should be treated like grenades. You wouldn't use a grenade for anything other than killing people, in any reasonable sense. You wouldn't use an... I don't know... AK-47? for anything but killing people, either. You could use it for hunting, but that would be substantially overkill. If you don't get the kill in two shots, you've lost your opportunity when hunting.

Define "rapid fire"
Define "high capacity"
AK47s are fully automatic actual assault weapons, and heavily regulated in the United States.
Grenades and indiscriminate in the manner that once they detonate shrapnel goes in all directions largely outside of the control of the operator. This is different to the operation of the majority of rifles. Your comparison is wholly inaccurate

 greatbigtree wrote:
Slower fire, low capacity FIREARMS are intended, specifically, for hunting game. For survival, in other words. They are less suitable for killing people, as the available ammunition is in shorter, less sustainable supply. I wouldn't take an over-under shotgun to war. I'd want an... again, not a big follower of assault weapons... AK-47? They seem to get the job done well enough.

Define "slower fire". Does this include semi-automatic fire were one round is fired for each pull of the trigger
Define "low capacity"
Are you aware that many hunting rifles use a more powerful round than the AR?

 greatbigtree wrote:
A particular individual may not be a threat to society. They could safely possess what would be a "Prohibited Weapon" in Canada. Some do. But law is not concerned with the individual, it's concerned, hopefully, with the greatest good. One must realize that with access to weapons capable of causing rapid-succession loss of life, that at some point a person that is disrespectful of the right to live will gain access to those weapons.

You keep saying greater good while ignoring that individuals have rights, and that you have not balanced the rights of millions against what is a statistically insignificant number of deaths. Again, more people are killed by fists and feet annually than by rifles,

 greatbigtree wrote:
"But it's my Right!" perhaps, but it shouldn't be. That right does not bring about the greatest good, and eventually removes the right of innocent persons to live, given a long enough time-span. It is eventual. Restricting such deadly arms limits that potential, and serves a greater good.

So my having a firearm for home defense/hunting/range shooting removes the right of an innocent person to life?



And to pre-empt the usual argument that the Second Amendment was only written to cover muskets the Founding Fathers were aware of, and fans of such rifles as the Belton flintlock which could fire 16 or 20 rounds in 5 seconds. The Congressional Congress had initially sought to obtain these firearms but the cost was deemed to be too great. Also see the Girardoni rifle (which Jefferson used to outfit the Lewis & Clark expedition) and the Puckle gun, which was one of the earliest weapons to be referred to as a "machine gun", being called such in a 1722 shipping manifest

The intent of the law is not for non-eligible buyers to have a "gun store" via gun shows. But they have, and that's the "gun show loophole". That's what people who talk about the loophole are talking about, buyers.

It's easy to fix, and a fix wouldn't even have any impact at all on private sellers. That's why it's stupid not to fix it the problem, and even stupider to pretend it doesn't exist in the first place.

 d-usa wrote:
The intent of the law is not for non-eligible buyers to have a "gun store" via gun shows. But they have, and that's the "gun show loophole". That's what people who talk about the loophole are talking about, buyers.

It's easy to fix, and a fix wouldn't even have any impact at all on private sellers. That's why it's stupid not to fix it the problem, and even stupider to pretend it doesn't exist in the first place.

Gun shows aren't these massive high volume sales outlets for firearms that people seem to think they are. They were much larger in the past, but at this point, at the last gun show I went to, I don't think I even recall seeing a sale of an actual firearm take place. Some other events may be different, but there aren't hundreds of weapons being cleared out at these events typically. They aren't a major source of weapons for prohibited persons, there's no evidence to support the idea that they're operating as some black market high volume clearing house. Making everything at a "gun show" go through a background check as if it were an FFL wouldn't really change anything in terms of violence and crime.

 d-usa wrote:
The intent of the law is not for non-eligible buyers to have a "gun store" via gun shows. But they have, and that's the "gun show loophole". That's what people who talk about the loophole are talking about, buyers.

The intent is that private sellers not engaged in the business of selling firearms may do so without government regulation. How those sellers choose to do so is immaterial. So whether they sell through classifieds, gun auction, gunshow it does matter what venue they choose so long as the individual is not involved in the business of selling firearms.

There is no loophole.

 d-usa wrote:
That's why it's stupid not to fix it the problem, and even stupider to pretend it doesn't exist in the first place.

I'm disappointed that you closed out last year with a strawman and you are intent to constantly use ad hominems to begin this year. It has been demonstrated why this is not a loophole to begin with, it is a feature of the law not a bug, and why it is not particular to gunshows. Saying that it is a loophole in spite of all evidence to the contrary and claiming that it is stupid to disagree with you does not make an argument.

Unless you can demonstrate that this is in fact a loophole, that the law was not intended to protect private sellers not in the business of selling firearms from government regulation, and that this is particular to gunshows then you have not established that this alleged loophole does exist. Until you manage to do so the point stands that this alleged loophole does not exist in law or in fact, and I do not intend to get into entertain your unsubstantiated claims further.

Have fsun with stupid gun laws proposed by liberals because you want to keep on pretending that actual issues don't need fixing then.

It goes back to my first statement, pretending it doesn't exist is idiotic.

 d-usa wrote:
Have fsun with stupid gun laws proposed by liberals because you want to keep on pretending that actual issues don't need fixing then.

It goes back to my first statement, pretending it doesn't exist is idiotic.

The issue you're talking about fixing *isn't* an issue. The "gun show loophole" doesn't exist in the way you think it does. Furthermore, "gun shows" aren't ultra high volume sales outlets, and there is no data or evidence to support the idea that guns obtained at gun shows without a background check are a meaningful proportion of guns used in crimes, and the infrastructure of the NCIS system is simply not designed to function around such sales in the first place and would generally require both legal and IT restructuring to allow such on a national scale.

 d-usa wrote:
Have fsun with stupid gun laws proposed by liberals because you want to keep on pretending that actual issues don't need fixing then.

It goes back to my first statement, pretending it doesn't exist is idiotic.

So again resorting to ad hominem rather than fact?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The issue you're talking about fixing *isn't* an issue. The "gun show loophole" doesn't exist in the way you think it does. Furthermore, "gun shows" aren't ultra high volume sales outlets, and there is no data or evidence to support the idea that guns obtained at gun shows without a background check are a meaningful proportion of guns used in crimes, and the infrastructure of the NCIS system is simply not designed to function around such sales in the first place and would generally require both legal and IT restructuring to allow such on a national scale.

Correct. Other than the fact that the "gunshow loophole" is a fiction there is no evidence that criminals exploit it to the levels claimed, much less that this "assault weapon" ban that is the core of this thread will meaningfully reduce crime.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spetulhu wrote:
I mean - your drugs come from Mexico but the illegal guns the Mexican drug cartels use, well, 70% of them are brought in from the USA.

Have you got a source for this 70% figure? The only way that I can see it being close to accurate is if we include guns that the US sold to the Mexican government through military contracts that the Cartels then acquired.

We do not need more restrictions on firearms ownership, especially restrictions based on cosmetic features.

Frankly, features such as pistol grips make firearms safer, as they make the firearm easier to control on the range or while hunting.

Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult to purchase a firearm already. It took me 4 hours of paperwork to purchase a 5 round capacity bolt action rifle manufactured in 1945. That is of course ignoring the $107 worth of licensing I had to purchase to own firearms in my state. I also had to sign away my 14th amendment rights in order to get the license (no literally, it said in the paperwork that they can come into my house at anytime for any reason at all once I signed the papers to get the license.)

So yeah... I stand as very much pro-firearm, and am completely against this new proposed ban.

 Cothonian wrote:
We do not need more restrictions on firearms ownership, especially restrictions based on cosmetic features.

Frankly, features such as pistol grips make firearms safer, as they make the firearm easier to control on the range or while hunting.

Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult to purchase a firearm already. It took me 4 hours of paperwork to purchase a 5 round capacity bolt action rifle manufactured in 1945. That is of course ignoring the $107 worth of licensing I had to purchase to own firearms in my state. I also had to sign away my 14th amendment rights in order to get the license (no literally, it said in the paperwork that they can come into my house at anytime for any reason at all once I signed the papers to get the license.)

So yeah... I stand as very much pro-firearm, and am completely against this new proposed ban.

What State are you based in?

Rapid fire, as in semi-automatic. It's pretty easy to pull a trigger in rapid succession. High Capacity would be anything more than 5 rounds per clip. Again, just going by the Canadian standards.

According to Facebook, which is not exactly a super accurate source of information...

Chris Murphy: Senator Documents Every Mass Shooting That Happened in 2015 on Social Media

"Here’s my 2015 year in review," Murphy, D-Conn., posted on New Year's Eve. He went on to post a message for all 372 mass shootings that occurred over the past year.

Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

Thousands of people die every year from car crashes. At what point will they outlaw cars? They kill a lot of people on a daily basis and by your standard we should still trample over the rights of everyone who responsibly owns a car and doesn't manage to kill anyone.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Rapid fire, as in semi-automatic. It's pretty easy to pull a trigger in rapid succession. High Capacity would be anything more than 5 rounds per clip. Again, just going by the Canadian standards.

Are you aware that for most handguns, even subcompact, 8+ rounds is standard capacity? And firearms have progressed so that semiautomatic is pretty standard on most platforms.

 greatbigtree wrote:
According to Facebook, which is not exactly a super accurate source of information...

Chris Murphy: Senator Documents Every Mass Shooting That Happened in 2015 on Social Media

"Here’s my 2015 year in review," Murphy, D-Conn., posted on New Year's Eve. He went on to post a message for all 372 mass shootings that occurred over the past year.

Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

There are 372 mass shootings if you skew the traditionally accepted definition, and include multiple people shot with a BB gun (thank you shootingtracker) so that can be ignored by anyone with a passing interest in honest discussion.

And individuals do have the right to life. That's why murder (and other crimes against the person) is illegal. I believe in the right to life, and as part of that I believe in the right to defend my life. Any loss of life is tragic, but to use it as an excuse to erode the rights of the law abiding is disgusting opportunism. What about people who lost their lives because their State refused to issue them a permit to carry a firearm within the given time? Do you have sympathy for their loss of life because they were robbed of a meaningful way to defend themselves?

No one has to die for my right to defend myself/hunt/target shoot etc. You are presenting a false dilemma.

Today I learned that my LCP is a high capacity pistol:

 Ouze wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
I mean - your drugs come from Mexico but the illegal guns the Mexican drug cartels use, well, 70% of them are brought in from the USA.

That seems very, very unlikely. I will agree that most of the guns that the Mexican government submits for tracing show a US origin, but that's because.... surprise, they only produce the guns suspected to have originated in the US for tracing. All of the AK's with Romanian or Bulgarian manufacture marks are never submitted which really, really throws that figure off. If I recover a cache of guns that consist of 40 Kalashnikovs and 3 AR-15s with lowers from Spike's Tactical, and I ask the US to trace the 3 AR-15s, it's going to show 100%.

No one can definitively say what percentage of arms in Mexico originated in the US, but whenever you see one of those "drugs on the table" photo ops and you see stuff like M203 grenade launchers and hand grenades, you should be suspicious.

Common sense says given the choice between relatively expensive semiautomatic weapons purchased in the US and smuggled over the border and then slowly and laboriously converted to full auto, or just getting fully-automatic weapons from El Salvador or the Mexican Army for the price of a chicken each.... I'm going to presume the latter.


As a side note, I'm not sure that conflicts in a different country are a sound basis for curtailing our rights.

I agree with what you've said here and throughout the thread. In fact, you're probably the most level headed and intelligent debater on this site. Just a funny story about the "drugs on the table" photo, friend of mine is in the Border Patrol and once caught hand grenades going into Mexico from the US. I mean I'm sure they weren't American, I just thought it was funny.

But like in the US, I can imagine most cartel related murders are committed with cheap handguns. So let's ban rifles.

Is there any US member that has even tried to defend this garbage bill?

 stanman wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

Thousands of people die every year from car crashes. At what point will they outlaw cars? They kill a lot of people on a daily basis and by your standard we should still trample over the rights of everyone who responsibly owns a car and doesn't manage to kill anyone.

A great question. Why do you draw the line where you do? Why is the 'right to own a gun' more sacred than, say, the 'right to go out sailing alone while drunk'? Both are unlikely, but possible, to cause harm to another, yet one is illegal and the other is not.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 stanman wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

Thousands of people die every year from car crashes. At what point will they outlaw cars? They kill a lot of people on a daily basis and by your standard we should still trample over the rights of everyone who responsibly owns a car and doesn't manage to kill anyone.

A great question. Why do you draw the line where you do? Why is the 'right to own a gun' more sacred than, say, the 'right to go out sailing alone while drunk'? Both are unlikely, but possible, to cause harm to another, yet one is illegal and the other is not.

The right to own weapons is more sacred because its in the Constitution. And its generally accepted that people have the right to defend themselves from individuals wishing to cause harm to them, weather that be a tyrannical government, a violent home invader, or any other number of hazards. Thats why I think its not just a legal right, but a fundamental human right to self defense by whatever means necessary. The 2nd amendment, and all the others in the Bill of Rights, are just a tangible representation of rights which rightfully belong to everybody.

Me owning an automatic weapon doesn't endanger anyone except someone attempting to cause me harm. It only causes harm if I choose to commit a crime with it, in which case it doesn't matter if I used an M60 or a sharpened stick. All of these crimes are already illegal, they don't become more or less so if you change the tools used in the commission of a crime. Guns are never a problem, just like cars aren't the problem with all the tens of thousands of people who are killed or injured in crashes. Someone snapping and killing a bunch of people with a gun is no different than if he ran down a bunch of people with a car instead. Yet in the first case people cry out for banning the murder weapon, and in the second don't make any mention of it, yet its exactly the same scenario and same root cause.

Let's not go to absurd extremes in defending the right to own weapons. It's indisputable fact that guns make certain crimes significantly easier to commit. If you want to kill someone it's a lot easier to shoot them than to attack them with a pointy stick. In the real world we have to acknowledge that we are making a deliberate choice to accept a certain level of criminal use of guns in exchange for allowing law-abiding citizens to own them. Even if you feel that the right to gun ownership and self defense out-weighs the harm caused and is the right thing to do it's still a tradeoff that you're making.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Rapid fire, as in semi-automatic. It's pretty easy to pull a trigger in rapid succession. High Capacity would be anything more than 5 rounds per clip. Again, just going by the Canadian standards.

That definition includes my revolver.

 Peregrine wrote:
Let's not go to absurd extremes in defending the right to own weapons. It's indisputable fact that guns make certain crimes significantly easier to commit. If you want to kill someone it's a lot easier to shoot them than to attack them with a pointy stick. In the real world we have to acknowledge that we are making a deliberate choice to accept a certain level of criminal use of guns in exchange for allowing law-abiding citizens to own them. Even if you feel that the right to gun ownership and self defense out-weighs the harm caused and is the right thing to do it's still a tradeoff that you're making.

Given that making guns illegal would not actually reduce their availability to criminals I don't think this trade-off you speak of actually exists in any appreciable form. Especially given that gun violence is extremely rare, and declining at a massive rate.

Criminals overwhelmingly use illegally acquired guns. This suggests that guns being available legally doesn't actually do anything to increase gun violence. If that were the case we would expect a massive portion of these crimes to be committed using legally purchased guns, but instead almost all of them are done using illegally acquired guns.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 stanman wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

Thousands of people die every year from car crashes. At what point will they outlaw cars? They kill a lot of people on a daily basis and by your standard we should still trample over the rights of everyone who responsibly owns a car and doesn't manage to kill anyone.

A great question. Why do you draw the line where you do? Why is the 'right to own a gun' more sacred than, say, the 'right to go out sailing alone while drunk'? Both are unlikely, but possible, to cause harm to another, yet one is illegal and the other is not.

One is a fundamental right enumerated in the founding document of the nation and incorporated as an individual right by the supreme court that can be exercised without any threat or harm to another, the other is not a right and is a fundamentally and inherently unsafe practice.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Rapid fire, as in semi-automatic. It's pretty easy to pull a trigger in rapid succession. High Capacity would be anything more than 5 rounds per clip. Again, just going by the Canadian standards.

The problem with this is that just about everything designed since the late 19th century, including all sorts of designs dating back to before the first world war, falls into this category. You'd basically be freezing the capabilities of firearms in the 1870's.

According to Facebook, which is not exactly a super accurate source of information...

Chris Murphy: Senator Documents Every Mass Shooting That Happened in 2015 on Social Media

"Here’s my 2015 year in review," Murphy, D-Conn., posted on New Year's Eve. He went on to post a message for all 372 mass shootings that occurred over the past year.

Did I say annual occurance? I guess I should have said daily. The individual's rights. How many individuals lost their right to life? A culture that perceives any personal loss as unacceptable, while hundreds die for that "right". You have my pity.

The problem is that a lot of these shootings are...well, stretches (as with the aforementioned BB gun incident) and tend to concentrate heavily around a number of socio-economically depressed geographical locations.

We're also talking about a nation of nearly 320 million people, the actual number of people involved in these incidents is quite low on a statistical or per-capita basis, effectively negligible.

 Peregrine wrote:
Let's not go to absurd extremes in defending the right to own weapons. It's indisputable fact that guns make certain crimes significantly easier to commit. If you want to kill someone it's a lot easier to shoot them than to attack them with a pointy stick. In the real world we have to acknowledge that we are making a deliberate choice to accept a certain level of criminal use of guns in exchange for allowing law-abiding citizens to own them. Even if you feel that the right to gun ownership and self defense out-weighs the harm caused and is the right thing to do it's still a tradeoff that you're making.

That's absolutely true, but as Americans, collectively, and over the centuries, as a society we generally lean more towards allowing greater freedom of action for the individual at the cost of increased discomfort of society. This applies in just about every aspect. Yeah, people can say atrocious things that offend many people and may be outright lies, but they're shielded by the 1st amendment, and we as a society have accepted that. Yes, in many instances it could be easier for society to deal with dangerous criminals without the 4th and 5th amendments, but we're willing to accept the extra danger from some of these criminals in exchange for greater protections for the individual against abuses of power. That's simply a facet of US society.

And, I think at this point, with the size of the US and the number of weapons in circulation, any attempt to remove such weapons from society wouldn't remove them from criminal elements given how vast the potential supply is and how long such items last, the time for something like that has come and gone.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Rapid fire, as in semi-automatic. It's pretty easy to pull a trigger in rapid succession. High Capacity would be anything more than 5 rounds per clip.

What is this clip you speak of? Perhaps you mean magazine? You know, the actual thing that holds the ammunition in the gun.

It would be easier to take gun control proponents seriously if they could actually use the correct terminology and weren't targeting entirely the wrong types of weapons for a problem which actually doesn't exist.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
You'd basically be freezing the capabilities of firearms in the 1870's.

It would go further than that. Revolvers and repeating rifles were a thing even before that.

 Ashiraya wrote:
A great question. Why do you draw the line where you do? Why is the 'right to own a gun' more sacred than, say, the 'right to go out sailing alone while drunk'? Both are unlikely, but possible, to cause harm to another, yet one is illegal and the other is not.

It's no more sacred than the right to free speech, protection against illegal imprisonment, or the right to trial by jury, should we also get rid of all the other sacred cows?

It was written into the foundation laws of our country so that we'd have the ability to protect ourselves, be it from other people, wildlife, or invading armies. Depending on our personal views It's something that we can opt to exercise or not, but under law we are at least given the option to choose. When you take away the option of choice then it is not freedom. Those that choose to use their freedom of choice to pursue ill will against others and do harm are dealt and punished by laws against such actions. As a free society we don't punish people for what they "might" do or "might' have the capacity to do.

If they want to go after criminal use of guns then they should make the penalties stiffer for the criminal use of a firearm, not use a blanket punishment on people that own and use their firearms in a responsible manner. Commit a crime with a gun? Automatic life sentence, it provides a much bigger legal deterrent and doesn't impact law abiding owners one bit.