This is indeed a hot topic that needs to be addressed nationally as there is no standard law with the exception of private ownership of WMDs (sorry Gary) and it even divides gun owners as to the need to own automatic-military style weapons. As a gun owner I personally don’t understand why someone needs an M-16 hanging on the wall. But adjusting the 2nd amendment is flying in the face of what is perceived to be a four hundred year old tradition (not every early settler owned a firearm) that made America great. It is so deep seated in the American psyche that I doubt the congress will ever be able to pass any solid legislation ending private ownership. And believe me Occam, there are people out there who would be delighted to “join” a militia organization as there are already several in practically every state. And the NRA is one of the if not THE most powerrful lobby in D.C. My solution is to ban ALL military style modern weapons; as they only have one use i.e. for the military. Hunters, collectors and target shooters are hobbyists. ANd BTW if you outlaw RC planes why not balloon enthusiasts as well? The Japanese used them as weapons in WW II. Oh and rocket builders.

Cap’t Jack

I think we should just outlaw people. It’s the only way to be sure. 

Take care,

Derek

garythehuman - 13 May 2012 06:47 PM

I demand my right to bear nuclear arms.

Ok, but the 2nd amendment only gives you the right to keep and bear arms.  You don’t have a constitutional right to actually use them.

TimB - 14 May 2012 03:17 PM

garythehuman - 13 May 2012 06:47 PM

I demand my right to bear nuclear arms.

Ok, but the 2nd amendment only gives you the right to keep and bear arms.  You don’t have a constitutional right to actually use them.

I believe they should also have added the right to keep and bear legs. Of course France did away with the right to keep and bear heads.

Or, what about the right to arm bears? At least give natures creatures a fighting’ chance!

Cap’t Jack

If we could use shaved bear appendages as weapons, would we have the right to keep and bear bare bear arms?

Soon there will be a theist movement to prohibit baring legs, as there is In some Islamic countries.

Bearing guns…Goooood!  Baring legs….....Baaaaad!

mckenzievmd - 08 March 2012 12:18 PM

I think the issue should ideally be decided on an empirical basis. Rocinante is right that guns are tools and not inherently evil. On the other hand, some kinds of guns are designed specifically for killing human beings, and they allow individuals to do so more easily and in greater numbers than most other tools available to the average person (the airplane analogy seems inappropriate here since the statistical risk posed by airplanes is so vanishingly small compared to that posed by guns that they cannot be reasonably compared). As special tools designed for this purpose, they pose a potential hazard that is unique t their nature. If one could show that the predominant use of such tools was legitimate self defense, I would support government encouraging, or at least not interfering, with access to them. On the other hand, if it could be clearly shown that the majority of the harm done by these tools was through illegitimate criminal activity, accidnets, and so on, then it would seem a simple public health matter to restrict them (leaving aside the quetsion of whether this is feasible in the United States, which it likely is not).

However, the bulk of the debate and most people’s decisions on this issue seem more values based than pragmatic or empirical. Rocinante, for example, while a smart and rational person, is deeply resistant to the idea that government interference with the choices and actions of individuals has any legitimacy at all, and I suspect this influences his opposition to gun control efforts and his interpretation of the evidence. I, on the other hand, am not only comfortable with a far greater role for government in restricting individual behavior, but I am also in medicine and I see the gun issue as a public health problem, not a moral issue. Others, I find, are often more concerned about the interpretation and relevance of the 2nd amendment and the issue of “rights” than about the practical consequences of allowing or restricting gun ownership. The Supreme Court decision to read te amendment as intending to ensure an individual right to gun ownership seems a perfect example of this torturing of simple and straightforward language to fit an ideological position.

So the debate often seems pointless to me because it involves issues of values and faith in certin moral principles, about which human beings are notoriously inflexible and resistant t contrary evidence, and it is predicated on a database which seems pretty thin and unreliable, easily interpreted in ways that conform to the ideology of the person doing the interpreting.

My own opinion is that dramatically restricting the availability of guns to ordinary citizens would do far more good than harm. I also have come to believe that the cat is too far out of the bag at this point, and I doubt we could ever make guns hard enough to come by to do any good without allowing a kind of intensive and authoritarian policing that even an old liberal like me would object to. So while I generally oppose things like mandatory open carry laws, I have doubts about the practical value of gun ownership restrictions since tey seem impractical t enforce.

It can be shown, and has been, empirically that the ‘so-called’ assault weapons in question are used, as a percentage of guns used in, roughly, .2% of gun crimes…....Demonstrating a vast gulf between the imagined danger, and the actual impact.  Demonstrating much of the desire to ban certain ‘scary’ classes of guns is based more on our Hollywood fueled imaginatings of what they might do, than any actual statistical support.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/rational.html

Thevillageatheist - 14 May 2012 07:03 AM

This is indeed a hot topic that needs to be addressed nationally as there is no standard law with the exception of private ownership of WMDs (sorry Gary) and it even divides gun owners as to the need to own automatic-military style weapons. As a gun owner I personally don’t understand why someone needs an M-16 hanging on the wall. But adjusting the 2nd amendment is flying in the face of what is perceived to be a four hundred year old tradition (not every early settler owned a firearm) that made America great. It is so deep seated in the American psyche that I doubt the congress will ever be able to pass any solid legislation ending private ownership. And believe me Occam, there are people out there who would be delighted to “join” a militia organization as there are already several in practically every state. And the NRA is one of the if not THE most powerrful lobby in D.C. My solution is to ban ALL military style modern weapons; as they only have one use i.e. for the military. Hunters, collectors and target shooters are hobbyists. ANd BTW if you outlaw RC planes why not balloon enthusiasts as well? The Japanese used them as weapons in WW II. Oh and rocket builders.

Cap’t Jack

If one believes that there is a legitimate purpose for the 2nd Amendment, one must admit WHY there is a 2nd Amendment…....And that is not to own your grand pa’s bird gun.

What specific weapons were protected by the 2nd Amendment?  Infanty small arms, expressly…......That is why there is a 2nd Amendment, to insure that the arms used by the individual military soldier are in the hands of the private citizen, who the founders intended to BE the militia.

Now there has a been a side step from the original opposition to the 2nd Amendment, that it defended State National Guards…......Once that argument was lost, now the argument is that it only means squirrel guns and .22 bolt action rifles for sport….....But any reading of the words of the founders clearly says otherwise…......As the founders were distrustful of standing armies separate from the people…........One does need to ‘join a militia’ as the founders considered the militia every able bodied citizen.

macgyver - 07 May 2012 09:12 AM

I’m not sure how I missed this thread. You guys have been kicking it back and forth for two months now I must have been dozing.

I have a feeling they will still be debating this topic a hundred years from now in this country and nothing will have changed. Gun ownership or at least the right to own a gun if you want to is such a part of the American psyche that its unlikely we would ever be able to pass laws dramatically restricting an individuals right to own a gun.

I think you would have to be an ardent gun owner though to argue in good faith that the net effect would be to lose more lives if we banned guns. It really is difficult to get any irrefutable data on the subject but my gut feeling is that the number of innocent people who die from criminal or accidental gun use is probably significantly larger than the number who are saved because there was a gun in the home or on their person.

If what we really cared about was saving lives I don;t think there is a good argument against abolishing gun ownership but this isn’t about saving lives. Gun ownership is about paranoia, mistrust of the government, and an inability to properly assess risk in most cases. Those who use guns primarily for hunting have a different argument but a weak one I think. In this day and age hunting is little more than a hobby. Few people need to hunt to feed their families. Its difficult then to justify the support of a hobby that requires us to accept 10,000’s of thousands of innocent deaths every year as a price for the freedom of pursuing that hobby. Would we allow model airplane hobbyists to continue to operate if their radio controlled planes were accidentally or intentionally being used to kill dozens of people every day? I doubt it.

Often times this argument comes down to an apples and oranges comparison of US homicide rates to European homicide rates….....But there are a few problems when one examines the evidence…...

1) Overall violent crime rates in the UK, for example, are actually higher than in the US…....Rapes, Assaults, Robberies, Burglaries, all higher….....And very arguably a result of an unarmed populace…....A clear demonstrable inverse effect occurs in relations to burglaries and armed homes, for example.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-rates-in-england-and-wales-worse-than-us-2042216.html

2) Active shooter mass shootings, though statistical anamolies, are not remotely US only phenomenon…....In fact, Western Europe has them at approximately the same rate as in the US…....But they are not news here when they occur.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/20/us-usa-shooting-denver-mass-idUSBRE86J0K620120720

3) The US homicide rate, which is perceived as being a result of easy access to guns is actually far more strongly correlated to the drug trade….....In fact, most US homicides occur alongside hotly contested drug trafficking zones, such as inner-cities and the southwest along the US/Mexican border….......Illegal drugs and drug profits are the catalyst for as much as 60%+ of US homicides in any given year.

Further, the illegal drug trade accounts for well OVER 70% of Mexican homicides in any given year.

How does homicide correlate with lax gun laws and legal gun ownership rates?  The highest concentration of legally owned weapons per population is in Wyoming, where nearly 60% of the entire population is armed…....If the theory of more guns equals more violence, the Wyoming would have the highest homicide rate in the US…....In reality it has a homicide rate identical to the UK’s.

Likewise the lowest homicide rates in the US are New Hampshire and Vermont, both of which have homicide rates 1/3 of the UK’s, and Vermont has never had a state law against anyone carrying a concealed weapon since the founding of the Republic.

Moreover, the US has become even more heavily armed over the last 20 years, with more guns in circulation now than ever before, more CCW laws, more people carrying guns on the street legally…...And a declining homicide and crime rate, a homicide rate that is now the lowest homicide rate seen since pre-1960.

Again, some serious reality problems exist for the argument that abolishing gun ownership, or even classes of guns, will make America safer…......The reality is that abolishing drug prohibition, which is the main engine of violence not just in the US, but in Mexico, Central and South America, would save thousands of American lives a year, and tens of thousands of Mexican lives…..........While greater gun control gun control would likely prevent few deaths, and likely result in greater numbers of assaults, rapes, burglaries and robberies.

As far as I saw, nobody is arguing for banning guns, that is your strawman argument.  Are you advocating that we all have a right and responsibility to carry semi-automatic weapons in order to make our society safer?

You also seem to forget that a well regulated militia has been replaced by a standing army and the well regulated militia is now our military reserves. When this document was written there were no semi or fully automatic weapons.  The Constitution is a living and evolving document and can certainly be amended (as it has before) in consideration of new and much more destructive weapons designed to kill large numbers of people. Why can we not carry hand grenades? They are very effective in killing large numbers of people.

The problem is one of control. Are you against any control of any weapon?  Cars are potentially dangerous to the public. This is why we have strict regulations of type of vehicles that can be driven in public, traffic laws to regulate traffic, licensing, testing, and INSURANCE in case you screw up and become liable. i say every gun owner should have liability insurance. Let the insurance companies evaluate the fitness of the person owning the guns, they would have a stake in game and they are very thorough in record keeping and tracking.

If one believes that there is a legitimate purpose for the 2nd Amendment, one must admit WHY there is a 2nd Amendment…....And that is not to own your grand pa’s bird gun.

What specific weapons were protected by the 2nd Amendment?  Infanty small arms, expressly…......That is why there is a 2nd Amendment, to insure that the arms used by the individual military soldier are in the hands of the private citizen, who the founders intended to BE the militia.

Now there has a been a side step from the original opposition to the 2nd Amendment, that it defended State National Guards…......Once that argument was lost, now the argument is that it only means squirrel guns and .22 bolt action rifles for sport….....But any reading of the words of the founders clearly says otherwise…......As the founders were distrustful of standing armies separate from the people…........One does need to ‘join a militia’ as the founders considered the militia every able bodied citizen.

First of all, in view of what just happened in Colorado you are advocating for the availability of automatic weapons for the general public? The assassin used an AR 15 with drum clip to kill and wound 70 innocent people and they just captured another potential killer in MD. Who was about to do the same thing. That being said the intention of the 2nd Amendment was to allow for the organization of a national militia in times of need. As to military small arms we manufactured only a small number for this purpose until the Whitney musket was invented. Most militia used their own squirrel guns as they were commanded to due to a lack of proper military small arms and there was no national guard organization. And no, laws don’t ban most weapons relegating us to using bolt action 22s.That is pure hyperbole. As to today’s militia groups, the founders didn’t mean that everyone should join the so-called militia clubs of today with their specific agendas, some hate fueled and racist. We now have a national guard fully tied into the regular military and don’t need the antiquated “militia” any longer. And BTW, American is becoming a safer place to live but it’s not because we are allowed to shoot anyone who invades our homes. In fact many Americans don’t even own a firearm. We have law enforcement officials to protect us when needed so I don’t need to set on my porch cradling granpappys shootin’ iron to fend off the heathens. If gun laws were more strictly enforced then maybe Holmes would have been captured sooner and this slaughter with an automatic weapon might not have happened.

Cap’t Jack

What I find most peculiar that every healthcare field worker (RNs, CNAs) has to have a background check before they can practice NURSING!  Voters have to get picture IDs before they can exercise their right to VOTE! I thought that was also a Constitutional Right.

But buying a gun, an instrument designed to kill living things? Nooooo problem! Any nutcase can buy a gun (any gun) without having to show identification or competency or even a simple background check.

How many rounds would you like for that semi automatic? 6000 ? Noooo problem. Here, we’ll throw in an extra box for a good customer.

And BTW, American is becoming a safer place to live but it’s not because we are allowed to shoot anyone who invades our homes. In fact many Americans don’t even own a firearm. We have law enforcement officials to protect us when needed so I don’t need to set on my porch cradling granpappys shootin’ iron to fend off the heathens. If gun laws were more strictly enforced then maybe Holmes would have been captured sooner and this slaughter with an automatic weapon might not have happened.

Cap’t Jack

Law enforcement actually has a bad record of protecting citizens from harm.

L.E. arrives after the damage is done; it would be better to arm yourself in most cases than wait for police response.

Write4U - 30 July 2012 07:02 PM

As far as I saw, nobody is arguing for banning guns, that is your strawman argument.  Are you advocating that we all have a right and responsibility to carry semi-automatic weapons in order to make our society safer?

You also seem to forget that a well regulated militia has been replaced by a standing army and the well regulated militia is now our military reserves. When this document was written there were no semi or fully automatic weapons.  The Constitution is a living and evolving document and can certainly be amended (as it has before) in consideration of new and much more destructive weapons designed to kill large numbers of people. Why can we not carry hand grenades? They are very effective in killing large numbers of people.

The problem is one of control. Are you against any control of any weapon?  Cars are potentially dangerous to the public. This is why we have strict regulations of type of vehicles that can be driven in public, traffic laws to regulate traffic, licensing, testing, and INSURANCE in case you screw up and become liable. i say every gun owner should have liability insurance. Let the insurance companies evaluate the fitness of the person owning the guns, they would have a stake in game and they are very thorough in record keeping and tracking.

A semi-automatic weapon is one that fires a round everytime a trigger is pulled…..I suspect you don’t have a firm grasp of some serious pre-requisite distinctions before engaging in an intelligent conversation about the subject.

And asking if i’m against the control of any weapons is creating a strawman of your own….....‘So called assault weapons’ are used in .2% of crimes involving guns, so a fixating on them is more emotional knee jerk reaction that rational problem solving….....Moreover, the vast majority of the population will not commit a violent crime….....Meaning the more LEGAL guns in circulation, the more guns in the hands of the same good folks…....

As to the canard about equating guns to cars, anyone can own any car they want, without registration, and drive them as fast as they want, on their own property….....You seek to register private property kept on one’s own property, please do find an analogy to that.

Further, the Constitution specifically refers to the possession of infantry small arms…....In the day of the founders, the musket and rifle…....Today, the equivalent, the M4/M16…....The very gun you claim it does not protect…......Why was that so?  Because the founders sought to ensure that the arms commonly only found in the hands of infanty troops of oppression of European armies be spread out among the population as ‘the militia’.

As for your liability insurance canard, it is only one where you wish to cost those who seek to own a gun money in order to try and convince people not to own them…....The shear number of guns in circulation compared to the numbers of accidents is so small as to make your suggestion absurd compared to automobile insurance, and the number of accidents involving private property every year….....So that is merely a scheme.

Now, there were founders who believed that the 2nd Amendment extended not just to infantry small arms like the rifle and musket….....But to cannon and warships…....I’m a common sense guy who is willing to compromise and accept restrictions on fighter aircraft and cannon over a certain size.