16/13 ~ The War On Guns Begins.

Not even the NRA is disputing that. The issue is what are the thresholds that are going to be used to deny an individual their constitutional right(s) and who's going to be making those decisions?

Ishmael

Glad to see the NRA has finally come around.

As recently as this past August, though, the NRA was working diligently to gut state background check programs in Virginia.

...and last April, the NRA worked to gut background checks in Colorado.

...and in Delaware as well

Personally, I believe the NRA is simply telling the public what they think the public wants to hear.
 
Perhaps the fact that I cited the FBI's UCR might indicate to a halfway intelligent individual that I already have.

Ishmael

So then you know why they don't match up, and makes us wonder why you asked in the first place.
 
A good read.

Larry Alan Burns: A conservative case for an assault weapons ban

By Larry Alan Burns, Special to the Los Angeles Times, [and lifelong NRA member]

Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.

Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The ban wasn't all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.

And it says something that half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner's rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.

I am not a social scientist, and I know that very smart ones are divided on what to do about gun violence. But reasonable, good-faith debates have boundaries, and in the debate about guns, a high-capacity magazine has always seemed to me beyond them.

Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semi-automatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don't even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine — it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?


I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the "mass" out of "mass shooting," or at least make the perpetrator's job a bit harder.

To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious Second Amendment, Eighth Amendment and logistical problems.

So what's the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't let people who already have them keep them. Don't let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don't care whether it's called gun control or a gun ban. I'm for it.

I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia v. Heller, when it held that the Second Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That's why I have mine.) I say it as someone who is not a big fan of the regulatory state.

I even say it as someone whose feelings about the NRA mirror the left's feelings about Planned Parenthood: It has a useful advocacy function in our deliberative democracy, and much of what it does should not be controversial at all.

And I say it, finally, mindful of the arguments on the other side, at least as I understand them: that a high-capacity magazine is not that different from multiple smaller-capacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines one day, there's a danger we would ban guns altogether the next, and your life might depend on you having one.

But if we can't find a way to draw sensible lines with guns that balance individual rights and the public interest, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competition, and make a home invader flee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden.

It speaks horribly of the public discourse in this country that talking about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting is regarded as inappropriate or as politicizing the tragedy. But such a conversation is political only to those who are ideologically predisposed to see regulation of any kind as the creep of tyranny. And it is inappropriate only to those delusional enough to believe it would disrespect the victims of gun violence to do anything other than sit around and mourn their passing. Mourning is important, but so is decisive action.

Congress must reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
 
Not even the NRA is disputing that. The issue is what are the thresholds that are going to be used to deny an individual their constitutional right(s) and who's going to be making those decisions?

Ishmael

If the rights of the individual trump the safety of the nation the constitution was written to guide, then there should be no standard and everyone should be able to carry without exception.

Open season; loonies, lock and load.

But if the constitution is the charter governing the ongoing pursuit of life, liberty and titty bars, then the ongoing pursuit ought to have rules in place to ensure same and prevent general anarchy.

So, no guns for loons and felons. A good start.

Mandatory proficiency training...cars are killing machines and you have to pass tests to drive a car.
 

Stop looking in the mirror as you post.
They already have the fed check system. Adding a State check is just bullshit.
 
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Sales taxes include all of the above...except property. Only those who live in houses pay property taxes, I believe....(meaning those in apartments, don't).
You really believe renters don't pay property taxes?
I suggest you go ask a few landlords and see how many just eat the property taxes, rather than factor them in to the rent amount.
 
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A good read.
Wow. That would cost a fortune.
It's estimated there are about 3,261,725 AR-15 "type" rifles in the US in private hands.
At a low estimate of $700 each (some are worth a lot more, some are worth less) that's $2,283,207,500 cost to the government to seize them. Just for the cost of the guns, not counting enforcement, ATF sieges of places where people refuse to give them up, cost of the high cap magazines or cost of one still in manufactures' and dealers' inventory.
 
A good read.

*views post*

Quite factual too.

Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semi-automatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don't even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine — it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?

Holmes drum mag jammed, most of them do and are junk. He did all his damage with shotgun pellets.
 
Anders Behring Breivik owned several 30-round magazines which he bought from the US. He fired 186 shots on Utoya. At his trial, he was declared sane.
 
I was going by state numbers. I don't dispute the wiki numbers (now that I'm on my second cup of coffee). The gang bangers alone are enough to make the difference in the spread. And quite frankly I really don't care how many of each other they whack. The more the merrier, except that the morons tend to engage in drive by shooting and are notoriously bad shots leading to innocents being hit. I wonder if any one truly believes that any law is going to have an impact on those clowns?

Regardless, those numbers suggest the "Harvard Rat Study" even more.

But those are not the type of shootings that lead to the media shit storm we're seeing today. It's the demented rampage shooter walking into a mall, theater, or school.

There has always been a conjunction between rampage shooters and serious mental health issues. I think that most every one can agree that if you are going to tackle the rampage shooter issue, mental health is the place to start. And that is where the debate should be focused. The Utopianists think that they can somehow make all the firearms in the nation disappear overnight. As a matter of real practicality, both logistical and political, I think we agree that that just isn't going to happen.

So how to deal with the mental health issue in a way that we can identify the seriously high probability homicidal nuts while at the same time not create a huge database filled with false positives? Our experience with the "No Fly" list hasn't been a stellar example of government efficiency.

Ishmael

Ish, have you seen this?

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/...illing-like-a-disease-to-slash-shootings.html
 
You really believe renters don't pay property taxes?
I suggest you go ask a few landlords and see how many just eat the property taxes, rather than factor them in to the rent amount.

Everybody pays property taxes including the homeless. When you buy anything in a store, some fraction of the store's landlord's property tax is part of the price, just like some fraction of the store's electric bill is part of the price.
 
Everybody pays property taxes including the homeless. When you buy anything in a store, some fraction of the store's landlord's property tax is part of the price, just like some fraction of the store's electric bill is part of the price.
Yes, I know. I was merely addressing the specific claim that renters don't pay property taxes.
 
Everybody pays property taxes including the homeless. When you buy anything in a store, some fraction of the store's landlord's property tax is part of the price, just like some fraction of the store's electric bill is part of the price.

At some point you're nitpicking and I know that while yes some of my electric bill was passed on to my customers it had nothing to do with my prices. Just like my pizza bill and World of Warcraft accounts were paid for by my customers.
 
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