The Gun Control Debate Thread

[tshile]

 

But I suspect that they'll say that there really isn't a good, cheap, test that's going to tell you who's going to go postal. 

 

Yeah, I'd defer to them.

 

I'm just thinking of things that might help.

 

I say this often, but it's because I truly believe it - Until the ATF is allowed to do their job, we're all just guessing. We have a gun problem, and it's not just mass shootings, it's the every day gun violence as well. And we're all just working with what makes sense to us, because the ATF isn't allowed to do their jobs.

[Fergasun]

tshile,

Yes - I have no problem "infringing" on whatever rights you have.

I am going to start using the term "Radical Violence". Until we can stop the radically violent from obtaining guns and inflicting mass casualties, I propose a 3 year ban on anything other than bolt actions, muskets, and shotguns.

Any more "mass shootings" (10 or more unrelated people shot) extend the ban another 6 months.

Now the NRA and other gun lovers, sellers aficionados have an incentive to prevent this type of garbage.

"Radical Violence"

[visionary]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/10/politics/david-petraeus-mark-kelly-gun-control/index.html

 

And now this:

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50400806/t/gen-mcchrystal-assault-rifles-are-battlefields-not-schools/#.V12ts-YrKi4

Gen. McChrystal: Assault rifles are for battlefields, not schools

 

McChrystal, who once led the war in Afghanistan, said that there was "no need" for those kinds of weapons to be available in the general population.

 

Former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the war in Afghanistan, endorsed strong gun control laws Tuesday on Morning Joe.

 

“I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

 

The AR-15, the civilian version of an M-16 or M-4, has been the weapon of choice  in many recent mass shootings —both Adam Lanza and James Holmes used them in Newtown and Aurora, respectively. Since Lanza massacred 20 young children in Newtown, Connecticut, gun control has returned to DC’s front-burner and the president has called for strict gun control measures.

 

“We’ve got to take a serious look—I understand everyone’s desire to have whatever they want—but we’ve got to protect our children, we’ve got to protect our police, we’ve got to protect our population,” McChrystal said. “Serious action is necessary. Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges and I just don’t think that’s enough.”

 

McChrystal led the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, but resigned amidst scandal after Rolling Stone magazine published a controversial profile that portrayed the General and his staff as dismissive and disrespectful of the president.

 

Tragic shooting sprees aside, McChrystal also pointed to the more deadly and common gun violence—32 people die each day from gun violence—as another reason he believes gun control is necessary.

 

“The number of people in America killed by firearms is extraordinary compared to other nations, and I don’t think we’re a bloodthirsty country,” he said. “We need to look at everything we can do to safeguard our people.”

Edited June 13, 2016 by visionary

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

I wonder about the notion of tracking ammo. 

 

[story]

 

And, granted, they were buying supplies that could only be used to load 16,000 rounds of bird shot.  Hardly something that screams "potential terrorist". 

 

But still, that somewhat historical, and somewhat OT story does make me wonder if the notion of "tracking large ammo purchases" will really be so painless as people seem to think. 

 

I think there are warning signs depending on the type of ammo purchased.  I see 16,000 rounds of bird shot purchased, I'm not thinking potential terrorist either.  I'm thinking skeet/trap shooting.  

 

I see 16,000 rounds of ammunition for an AR-15 along with high capacity clips, I'm wondering what their reason is for purchasing that much at one time and assuming worse things.

 

Maybe only tracking ammo if it's over a certain amount would be a better solution.  And only tracking purchases of high capacity magazines.  It can easily be implemented which is my point.  If they can track my allergy medicine, they can use the same systems/technology to track ammo and magazines.  

Edited June 13, 2016 by Dont Taze Me Bro

[BornaSkinsFan83]

I'm trying to understand the desire to own an AR-15. Not the legality of It, but the psychological desire. Because I don't get it. I'm not anti gun. I'm ex-Army. I've shot everything from muzzleloaders to MK-19's and everything in between. I plan on hopefully potentially getting something for the house in the next few years if possible. But it sure as hell isn't going to be any type of assault rifle. Are people just getting them because they can? Like when someone buys a big yellow hummer with spinners on it?

[tshile]

tshile,

Yes - I have no problem "infringing" on whatever rights you have.

 

 

That's fine, hope you're ok with someone else taking some of yours

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

I'm trying to understand the desire to own an AR-15. Not the legality of It, but the psychological desire. Because I don't get it. I'm not anti gun. I'm ex-Army. I've shot everything from muzzleloaders to MK-19's and everything in between. I plan on hopefully potentially getting something for the house in the next few years if possible. But it sure as hell isn't going to be any type of assault rifle. Are people just getting them because they can? Like when someone buys a big yellow hummer with spinners on it?

 

I'd say yes, because they can or because it looks cool, etc.  They can be used for hunting and are, but I don't hunt and I don't have a desire to own one.  Not for home protection either, that's what my 12 gauge is for.  

Edited June 13, 2016 by Dont Taze Me Bro

[TheGoodBits]

I'm trying to understand the desire to own an AR-15. Not the legality of It, but the psychological desire. Because I don't get it. I'm not anti gun. I'm ex-Army. I've shot everything from muzzleloaders to MK-19's and everything in between. I plan on hopefully potentially getting something for the house in the next few years if possible. But it sure as hell isn't going to be any type of assault rifle. Are people just getting them because they can? Like when someone buys a big yellow hummer with spinners on it?

I don't know about spinners but there is probably a correlation to wanting to buy hummers and wanting to buy an AR15. These people may have something in common...

[stevenaa]

Tracking ammo is impractical. I'd say it's impossible.   1000 rounds sounds like a lot, but it's really not.   The number of people buying that much and much more for typical use is huge.  A small 1 gallon bucket of 22 ammo holds 1300 rounds.  No practical way to weed out who or who may not be suspect. 

 

I have no issue with putting limitations in place for magazine size, making all purchases require registration and even requiring licensing for gun ownership.  Make every sale of a weapon require submitting a tax form and make the purchaser pay sales tax on it, just like we do for automobiles.  Have a 2 week waiting period and cross references all purchases to any terror watch lists.  We seem to look back on these and see missed opportunities where flags should have been raised.   Fix that.

[tshile]

I'm trying to understand the desire to own an AR-15. Not the legality of It, but the psychological desire. Because I don't get it. I'm not anti gun. I'm ex-Army. I've shot everything from muzzleloaders to MK-19's and everything in between. I plan on hopefully potentially getting something for the house in the next few years if possible. But it sure as hell isn't going to be any type of assault rifle. Are people just getting them because they can? Like when someone buys a big yellow hummer with spinners on it?

 

The people I know that own them say they are incredibly fun to shoot.

 

You can also customize them in almost infinite ways, which means you've basically put a hobby on top of a hobby. I think most of them enjoy ripping them apart and rebuilding them with new mods (and showing them of when done) than actually shooting them, to be honest.

 

But I'm with you, I don't have the desire. I wouldn't mind owning and shooting one (even though I don't), but if they banned them tomorrow it wouldn't bother me either...

[Fergasun]

That's fine, hope you're ok with someone else taking some of yours

I am "pro gun" but sick of the shootings. When I read about the lack of gun violence in Canada or Japan - it is compelling information (anecdotally).

2 week waiting period? Screw that - 2 months minimum... its easier to get a gun than a passport?!?

[TheGreatBuzz]

I wouldn't be surprised if I have a 1000 rounds at my house right now.  I pick up a box of 100 here and there when it's on sale.  I haven't been to the range in a while so I'm sure it has piled up.  But when I go to the range I would say it isn't hard to go through 500 rounds if I go with a group of friends.

[DogofWar1]

Ammunition is a bad choke-point.  People make their own, or buy boxes in bulk far too often for a correlation to appear, I suspect.

 

Maybe there's a causal link between "first time purchase" BEING a "bulk purchase" and "mass shootings," but even there I'm unsure we'll see that, since I imagine many young people who grew up with parents making bulk purchases will, themselves, early in their independent lives, make a bulk purchase.

 

Point-of-purchase/transfer and hardware are probably better choke-points to focus on.

 

 

Question to those who know more about gun manufacturing and modification than I.  How hard would it be to create a firearm that could not be modified from semi-automatic to automatic?  It seems like that is one of the issues with creating a hardware choke-point, in that the level of skill needed to modify to fully automatic for some weapons is reasonably low.

 

Further, do people manufacture, and how easy is it to manufacture, home-made clips?  Like, if a statutory limitation of 6 bullets per clip was implemented, how easily would we expect people to be able to circumvent that?

Edited June 13, 2016 by DogofWar1

[visionary]

The people I know that own them say they are incredibly fun to shoot.

 

You can also customize them in almost infinite ways, which means you've basically put a hobby on top of a hobby. I think most of them enjoy ripping them apart and rebuilding them with new mods (and showing them of when done) than actually shooting them, to be honest.

 

But I'm with you, I don't have the desire. I wouldn't mind owning and shooting one (even though I don't), but if they banned them tomorrow it wouldn't bother me either...

I wonder if it's possible to make such weapons legal to use at ranges or such for those who enjoy that, but not for private use.

I don't know...just a thought.  I guess they would still be out there though.

(anyway, I don't know much about guns, so I've found this thread pretty informative)

Edited June 13, 2016 by visionary

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

Tracking ammo is impractical. I'd say it's impossible.   1000 rounds sounds like a lot, but it's really not.   The number of people buying that much and much more for typical use is huge.  A small 1 gallon bucket of 22 ammo holds 1300 rounds.  No practical way to weed out who or who may not be suspect. 

 

I have no issue with putting limitations in place for magazine size, making all purchases require registration and even requiring licensing for gun ownership.  Make every sale of a weapon require submitting a tax form and make the purchaser pay sales tax on it, just like we do for automobiles.  Have a 2 week waiting period and cross references all purchases to any terror watch lists.  We seem to look back on these and see missed opportunities where flags should have been raised.   Fix that.

 

Impractical, maybe.  Impossible, no.  Everything has a bar code with a description of the contents.  Doesn't matter if you purchase one box of 100 rounds or 20 boxes of 100 rounds.  

 

If they implemented the same tracking measures they do for pseudophederine, it would require your driver's license to be scanned along with tracking it to you individually.  Tracking it would actually be extremely easy.  

 

Back to the first part of your post, it may be impractical, now that I think about it.  It would be hard to determine what amount is too much, when do we need to get involved and look into an individual, etc. etc. etc.  

 

It was just a thought I tossed out there.  But they could use the same tracking measures to track high capacity magazines, etc. which might be pointless too, but it could be done.  

Edited June 13, 2016 by Dont Taze Me Bro

[stevenaa]

Impractical, maybe.  Impossible, no.  Everything has a bar code with a description of the contents.  Doesn't matter if you purchase one box of 100 rounds or 20 boxes of 100 rounds.  

 

If they implemented the same tracking measures they do for pseudophederine, it would require your driver's license to be scanned along with tracking it to you individually.  Tracking it would actually be extremely easy.  

 

Back to the first part of your post, it may be impractical, now that I think about it.  It would be hard to determine what amount is too much, when do we need to get involved and look into an individual, etc. etc. etc.  

 

It was just a thought I tossed out there.  But they could use the same tracking measures to track high capacity magazines, etc. which might be pointless too, but it could be done.  

Let me clarify.  You could easily track and record the purchases.  What is impossible is determining the intent of those making the purchases.  If they're on a watch list of some sort,  it should be flagged. But the numbers of individuals buying ammo makes it impossible to screen on that alone.   So if you want to cross reference firearm and ammo purchases to watch lists, that's doable.   But if Joe Schmo goes and buys an AR and 1000 rounds of ammo,  a very common purchase,  knowing if that's a trigger or not is impossible, and there will never be enough agents to personally interview those people or the funds with which to do so. 

[DogofWar1]

I wonder if it's possible to make such weapons legal to use at ranges or such for those who enjoy that, but not for private use.

I don't know...just a thought.  I guess they would still be out there though.

(anyway, I don't know much about guns, so I've found this thread pretty informative)

 

I was thinking about something like that, a "gun range loophole" in the context of temporary transfers of firearm custody.

 

One of the possible sets of restrictions is that private sales and transfers must be recorded somewhere and registered.  I would think temporary transfers (letting friend Joe borrow gun for weekend) would require some sort of quick registration as well, with the goal of making sure all parties have done their due diligence on the other party.

 

Of course, that would prohibit a father letting his son shoot his gun, even at a range, which seems overly harsh.  I think to that end, a lifting on limitations on temporary transfers of control within the confines of a gun range would make sense.

[Renegade7]

That all sounds reasonable Taze, but if they are tracking your ammo purchases, then they'll know where to find you when Obama personally comes to confiscate all the guns. Finally. After 7 1/2 years of not doing that. NOW it's gonna happen.

Obama is running out of time, that's for sure. lolz

[tshile]

 How hard would it be to create a firearm that could not be modified from semi-automatic to automatic? 

 

They've already done this. Foreign manufactured/old guns are the ones you hear about this being done to, and there's nothing we can do about those. This was a mandate from our government. I believe it was done quite a while ago. They use to be able to file down a component (I believe the firing pin? im not sure...) but the gov't put a stop to that.

 

What they're doing now is making semi-automatic guns with very touchy triggers, light triggers, etc. So they're kind of like it, but not really, they've essentially just minimized what it means to 'pull' the trigger.

 

I'm A-OK with doing something about that too.

I am "pro gun" but sick of the shootings. When I read about the lack of gun violence in Canada or Japan - it is compelling information (anecdotally).

2 week waiting period? Screw that - 2 months minimum... its easier to get a gun than a passport?!?

That's fine. I'm just pointing out that when you decide you don't care about someone's specific rights, be prepared for others to stop caring about yours. And you won't get to choose which ones they do and don't care about.

I wonder if it's possible to make such weapons legal to use at ranges or such for those who enjoy that, but not for private use.

I don't know...just a thought.  I guess they would still be out there though.

(anyway, I don't know much about guns, so I've found this thread pretty informative)

 

Like legal for the range to own and rent out, but not for people to own?

 

It's possible but I don't know where you'd get the support for such a thing. If Sandy Hook didn't swing more people any further than it did I don't know what makes anyone think there's some other event that would finally swing majority over to the side of doing something.

 

It's like... another simple solution would be the smart gun movement. Make the guns only programmable by licensed gun dealers (hey, more money for the industry), and that could require its own additional background check. Then you'd be able to prevent things like Sandy Hook, where someone stole the guns from another person that was legally allowed to buy them.

 

But there's so many people out there that hear 'gun control' and shut their brains off and just go NO GET AWAY FROM MY GUNS

Edited June 13, 2016 by tshile

[stevenaa]

I was thinking about something like that, a "gun range loophole" in the context of temporary transfers of firearm custody.

 

One of the possible sets of restrictions is that private sales and transfers must be recorded somewhere and registered.  I would think temporary transfers (letting friend Joe borrow gun for weekend) would require some sort of quick registration as well, with the goal of making sure all parties have done their due diligence on the other party.

 

Of course, that would prohibit a father letting his son shoot his gun, even at a range, which seems overly harsh.  I think to that end, a lifting on limitations on temporary transfers of control within the confines of a gun range would make sense.

I think that the case where someone is going to use a gun for harm, I'm not comfortable holding the gun loaner responsible unless he's knowingly loaning it to a felon.  If me and Jim Bob are long friends and use each others guns for hunting,  I don't think I'd be responsible for Jim Bob flipping out and using my firearm.    Using friends guns for hunting is common place.  That's like loaning my care to someone who then drives to a bar and kills someone drunk driving. 

[Renegade7]

Let me clarify. You could easily track and record the purchases. What is impossible is determining the intent of those making the purchases. If they're on a watch list of some sort, it should be flagged. But the numbers of individuals buying ammo makes it impossible to screen on that alone. So if you want to cross reference firearm and ammo purchases to watch lists, that's doable. But if Joe Schmo goes and buys an AR and 1000 rounds of ammo, a very common purchase, knowing if that's a trigger or not is impossible, and there will never be enough agents to personally interview those people or the funds with which to do so.

I can dig what you are saying, and have seen this point come up before. I gotta say though, that we shouldn't be trying to watch everyone, but be able to more easily connect the dots ahead of time.

We keep hearing after the fact how such and such had this info, and such and such had that info, but there was no centralized place to put together and recognize patterns then sound the alarm dynamically.

We're not looking for Joe Schmo (nor should we). We're looking for people with possible terrorist ties or history mental illness buying large amounts of ammunition. At that point it doesn't matter why, because of the risk of possible intent is worth investigating just to be sure. I'd want us to at least do that.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Renegade7

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

These are the things our founding fathers felt were God given human rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to a fair and speedy trial, and the ability for absolutely anybody to buy absolutely any killing machine for whatever the **** reason they want.

[TheGreatBuzz]

And we get so hung up on buying guns but a speedy trial may have you sitting in jail for a year awaiting trial....Glad we have our prorities.

[tshile]

These are the things our founding fathers felt were God given human rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to a fair and speedy trial, and the ability for absolutely anybody to buy absolutely any killing machine for whatever the **** reason they want.

 

Or, another possible way of looking at it:

Things necessary to keep your government in check.

 

(No, I don't think today the individual can fight the military. hell those oregon dip ****s couldn't withstand the FBi and all the FBI did was just stand there. but I also don't think the founding fathers foresaw ar-15s and everything else we have today.)

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

The people I know that own them say they are incredibly fun to shoot.

You can also customize them in almost infinite ways, which means you've basically put a hobby on top of a hobby

I have a problem with keeping assault rifles in the public market because some people think it's a toy.