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+--- Thread: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control (/showthread.php?tid=209532)
Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - Lemon Drop - 10-05-2017
NRA and White House say they could get behind outlawing "bump stocks." Of course we won't be touching AR-15s though.
We can't be trusted with Four Loco at any age, but unlimited AR-15s are just fine. In my state they are easier to get than handguns.
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - pdq - 10-05-2017
While it is undeniably encouraging that the NRA apparently thinks they need to offer up a near-meaningless concession to defuse anger post-Vegas, I still want to know why any civilian needs an AR-15.
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - cbelt3 - 10-05-2017
pdq wrote:Me either. The Mini-14 is a much more capable rifle. Then again....
While it is undeniably encouraging that the NRA apparently thinks they need to offer up a near-meaningless concession to defuse anger post-Vegas, I still want to know why any civilian needs an AR-15.
https://www.amazon.com/CMMG-Tactical-Cooked-Bacon-9-Ounce/dp/B003RC5FQ2
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - hal - 10-05-2017
Of course they support this - it doesn't curtail the sale of guns in any way whatsoever. As long as it doesn't harm their clients, they don't give a flying fuck...
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - DeusxMac - 10-05-2017
Force the gun buyers to pay the full price. None of those cheap work-arounds!
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - samintx - 10-05-2017
pdq wrote:
While it is undeniably encouraging that the NRA apparently thinks they need to offer up a near-meaningless concession to defuse anger post-Vegas, I still want to know why any civilian needs an AR-15.
Tenderize you deer meat on hoof?
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - pdq - 10-05-2017
Politico states the obvious:
The move by the influential gun lobby, which often stifles any legislation that might be interpreted as curbing Second Amendment rights, is designed to head off a messy gun control debate in Congress.
BTW, one simple law change that would do a world of good is making gun (or other weapon) manufacturers have to face civil liability to the victims of folks using their products, as they are intended to be used. If someone has a relative who gets stabbed by a kitchen knife, the manufacturer of that knife can reasonably and believably point to the predominant, intended use of their product in chopping vegetables in defense.
AR-15s are meant to kill people, and everyone knows that. Just make their manufacturer (and retailer) liable for it's intended use, and the market would drop by 90% in a year.
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - samintx - 10-05-2017
BRET STEPHENS
Repeal the Second Amendment
I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.
From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. “States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.
From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.
From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.
From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?
And now we have the relatively new and now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, something that remains extremely rare in the rest of the world. Conservatives often say that the right response to these horrors is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health professional before he murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week.
Continue reading the main story
Bret Stephens
RECENT COMMENTS
Fred Grimmer 5 minutes ago
Well said! The 2nd amendment crowd have argued for years that legislative half measures won’t reduce gun-related mortality and perhaps they...
Kate De Braose 5 minutes ago
We ought to stop to consider the reasons for so many people to buy guns. there are a great many reasons, but primarily the idea is to profit...
Max4 20 minutes ago
Just clarify the existing one. Once it is interpreted the correct way, it will not mean the way the pro gun people say it does. Back in...
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What might have raised a red flag? I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.
Given all of this, why do liberals keep losing the gun control debate?
Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for
The National Rifle Association does not have Republican “balls in a money clip,” as Jimmy Kimmel put it the other night. The N.R.A. has donated a paltry $3,533,294 to all current members of Congress since 1998, according to The Washington Post, equivalent to about three months of Kimmel’s salary. The N.R.A. doesn’t need to buy influence: It’s powerful because it’s popular.
Nor will it do to follow the “Australian model” of a gun buyback program, which has shown poor results in the United States and makes little sense in a country awash with hundreds of millions of weapons. Keeping guns out of the hands of mentally ill people is a sensible goal, but due process is still owed to the potentially insane. Background checks for private gun sales are another fine idea, though its effects on homicides will be negligible: guns recovered by police are rarely in the hands of their legal owners, a 2016 study found.
In fact, the more closely one looks at what passes for “common sense” gun laws, the more feckless they appear. Americans who claim to be outraged by gun crimes should want to do something more than tinker at the margins of a legal regime that most of the developed world rightly considers nuts. They should want to change it fundamentally and permanently.
There is only one way to do this: Repeal the Second Amendment.
Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.
Donald Trump will likely get one more Supreme Court nomination, or two or three, before he leaves office, guaranteeing a pro-gun court for another generation. Expansive interpretations of the right to bear arms will be the law of the land — until the “right” itself ceases to be.
1759
COMMENTS
Some conservatives will insist that the Second Amendment is fundamental to the structure of American liberty. They will cite James Madison, who noted in the Federalist Papers that in Europe “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” America was supposed to be different, and better.
I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: Take the guns—or at least the presumptive right to them—away. The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction.
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Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - hal - 10-05-2017
the rest of the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/guns-second-amendment-nra.html
Re: Apparently it IS the right time to talk about gun control - pdq - 10-05-2017
Politically impossible, I fear, Sam. Two thirds of Congress (IIRC), followed by three fourths of the states.
In today's political environment? Never gonna happen.