Banning guns versus banning alcohol.

[beevul]

Once upon a time, we banned alcohol, because we blamed the alcohol rather than those who misused it, for the ills associated with its misuse.


People wanted alcohol.

Eventually, logic won and we repealed prohibition. Somewhere along the way, the lesson was learned that it isn't the alcohol that is the problem, but those who misuse it. Modern 'Highway safety' groups aren't trying to ban the alcohol or the car, or even 'high performance' cars. Instead, they focus on the folks that drink and drive. America is slowly being taught this lesson right now on MJ, too.



Based on the last 8 consecutive months of record gun sales, and the fact that there are 300+ million guns in private hands in America, I'd say that people want guns too.

Why do some people who otherwise learned the lessons of prohibition jump track when it comes to guns, and blame the guns?

[MH1]

1. Commerce in alcohol is regulated. nt.

[anoNY42]

2. OTOH

One can buy alcohol without a background check, even if one is a "suspected terrorist"...

[Press Virginia]

4. heck, you can be a full blown alcoholic and buy alcohol while high on drugs

can't do that with a gun

[anoNY42]

17. Even if you had a history of Drunk Driving....

[Salviati]

18. One can't use a fifth of vodka to walk into a club and kill 49 people.

[Press Virginia]

19. how do you know he didn't drink a fifth of vodka before he walked into that club

[ileus]

20. One can't use a fifth of vodka to protect your family either.

[sarisataka]

23. A repeat DUI

Offender drank a fifth of vodka and killed my 18yro cousin with his truck. He didn't need a background check to get the booze or the truck.
Should I be happy he didn't use a gun?

[gejohnston]

25. he could have killed everyone with one or two

just block the fire exits and cause panic for people to take cover in the bathrooms.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Molotov_cocktail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpStairs_Lounge_arson_attack

[Straw Man]

31. Let's take a stroll down that avenue of inquiry ...

Illegal drugs and alcohol helped lead to the imprisonment of 4 out of 5 inmates in the nation's prisons and jails, a three-year study has found.

The report, which was released yesterday by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, determined that of 1.7 million prisoners in 1996, 1.4 million had violated drug or alcohol laws, had been high when they committed their crimes, had stolen to support their habit or had a history of drug and alcohol abuse that led them to commit crimes.

--http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/09/us/drugs-or-alcohol-linked-to-80-of-inmates.html

[anoNY42]

46. But you could easily kill an entire family in a car.

It's a difference of degree, and anyway most shootings involve similar numbers of victims as drunk driving accidents.

[gejohnston]

10. so are guns, even more strictly than alcohol

there are five federal gun control laws at the moment. Gun dealers are licensed by the feds and subject to warrant-less inspections of transaction records, liquor stores are not. I can go to the next state and legally buy a beer, not true with a handgun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_United_States#Major_federal_gun_laws

[Eleanors38]

49. With the repeal of prohibition, the people ceded that regulation to...

...the states. The feds got out of the prohibition bidness.

[Duckhunter935]

36. So are weapons, much more so for them

[virginia mountainman]

42. LOL tell that to some of my "kin folks"...

Generations of my "kin" have thrived while ignoring "alcohol" regulations..

Heck, I even have a jug under the sink of their "product"

Want some?

[safeinOhio]

3. On the other hand....

the ban(restrictions) on full automatic weapons has worked well for 80 some years.

[Press Virginia]

5. There is no ban on automatic weapons

you can obtain one if you obtain a FFL (not hard to do) and can afford to pay for the weapon

[safeinOhio]

15. There was never

A ban on alcohol either. It was restricted to a script from a doctor. In my antique business I had a bottle from that era that had the drug store label on it.

[Ghost in the Machine]

45. "you can obtain one if you obtain a FFL (not hard to do) and can afford to pay for the weapon"... or

if you had $400 on the streets of Miami back in the 80's... that's how much I paid for an Uzi. The ony place I ever shot it was deep in the backroads of the Everglades, just target shooting, or shooting to be shooting, and that's where it remains today, in the bottom of a canal. The damn thing used to jam so much that I got frustrated one day and just tossed it in the canal.

If you had connections with the Jamaicans or Colombians, which I did at the time, you could get an AK-47 for between $800 - $1000. Hell, you could get one for free, plus some cash, if you agreed to do a "hit" for them but I was never interested, or even give a second thought, to anything like that. Stuff like that could get YOU killed too!

I only got the Uzi for the same reason I bought a Corvette once, and sold it a couple of months later.... the reason?? Just so I could say that I had owned one.... I would imagine that even on the streets, with the right connections, it would still cost a LOT more today.

I had a Model 1956 Romanian Military SKS that was semiauto, and had someone offer to convert it to full auto for me, but I wasn't interested. It was LEGAL the way it was, and I was much older and wiser and actually CARED about the consequences of getting caught with a full auto. I just sold it to a collector about 2 months ago. I'd had it for 4 or 5 years, obtained in some "horse trading", and finally found someone who knew the value, as the Romanian Issue is very rare in the US....

Peace,

Ghost

[Jerry442]

6. It amazes me that Roberts, Scalia et al. didn't try to roll that one back too. NT

[Press Virginia]

7. probably because it doesn't exist

[Jerry442]

8. Aha! Since the burden on would-be full-auto buyers is so innocuous...

...let's apply it to semi-auto buyers as well.

[Press Virginia]

9. I'm 100% certain you don't know what a semi-automatic gun is

nor would you be happy if every single gun purchaser had to obtain a license to buy a gun

[Jerry442]

12. I'm quite clear on the difference between auto and semi-auto. I also know that...

...the extensive regulations on full-auto (which amount to a de facto ban) are an Achille's heel to your all-gun-regulations-are-unconstitutional shtick. Even your hero Scalia wouldn't go there. You know in your heart, that if regs can be heaped on full-auto weapons making them unavailable to nearly everyone, that there is no compelling legal principle that would make it impossible for the same thing to happen to semi-auto.

de fac·to
ˌdā ˈfaktō/
adverb
adverb: de facto; adverb: defacto

1.
in fact, or in effect, whether by right or not.
"the island has been de facto divided into two countries"
synonyms: in practice, in effect, in fact, in reality, really, actually
"the republic is de facto two states"
antonyms: de jure

adjective
adjective: de facto; adjective: defacto

1.
denoting someone or something that is such in fact.
"a de facto one-party system"
synonyms: actual, real, effective
"de facto control"
antonyms: de jure

[Press Virginia]

14. ruhhheaaaaallly.

so you're aware that double actions revolvers are semi automatic pistols.

furthermore, there is no ban.....which is why I can go to certain gun ranges and shoot fully automatic rifles. The COST of one is more prohibitive than the license you have to get from the government.

[Jerry442]

16. I encourage all reading this to research this issue on their own and form their own conclusions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act

Is a good place to start. Knowledge is power.

[friendly_iconoclast]

27. Your reply to your interlocutor has a whopping strawman argument at the center of it

Specifically, you attribute sentiments to them that they did not, in fact, express:

"your all-gun-regulations-are-unconstitutional shtick."

[Straw Man]

32. It's not so innocuous.

The 1934 Act put up a bunch of hoops to jump through, but real infringement came from the closing of the full-auto registry in 1986. That meant that no new full-auto guns could be brought to market: only ones that existed before 1986 can be legally owned. The background checks, fees, etc. pale in the face of the economic reality of guns that now cost well into five figures because of the limited supply.

I'm sure you'd like something similar to happen with semi-auto firearms, but it won't. The copious supply would prevent any outrageous price increases. A closed registry on semi-auto firearms might be the dreamed-of endgame for gun controllers, but it would take several hundred years to have anything like the effect it had on full-auto weapons.

[gejohnston]

11. outside of the movies and the ones stolen from cops and national guard armories

Even then, there were just a few people that made the headlines for about a year.
they were rarely used in crime. People didn't own them because of the expense. What worked was increased security at national guard armories.
Once the Barkers and their copy cats were dealt with, it ended. The NFA had nothing to do with it.

Let's discuss how well bans on full autos worked out for the people at Charlie Hebdo, the kosher deli in Paris, the concert in Paris later that year, a pub in Denmark, or any of the criminal and terrorist acts in Europe for the past four decades.

[benEzra]

55. Because full autos were never common in civilian hands, and semiautos work well for civilian use.

But since 75% of the civilian gun market is semiauto, and semiautos have *always* been considered suitable for civilians, banning semiautos would be a lot more like trying to ban beer and wine than banning, say, fentanyl.

Semiautomatics are civilian-legal in California and in Bloomberg's New York City, in Canada, and across most of Europe. They are not going anywhere.

[Warpy]

13. Alcohol can be made in a bathtub, in pots and pans, in old rain barrels

It's one of the easiest things to make, although it's more difficult to make it palatable. I knew someone who taught school on a rez in the far north, kept a plastic trash can next to the wood stove filled with water, molasses, and bread yeast. He said it was awful but it was alcohol and got you there.

While you can make a zip gun fairly easily, it is nearly impossible to aim, requires reloading with every shot, and tends to cook itself fairly quickly.

However, no sane person is calling for a ban on all guns, just the one that make a mass murderer's job really easy. No one thinks such a ban will be absolutely perfect, the black market and sociopathic greed being what they are. What it will do is slow things down and sometimes that's enough.

[Jerry442]

21. Point well-made actually, but bleah.

You are not going to get any calls from the alcoholic beverage industry asking you to write ad copy.

[Warpy]

22. Considering I'm an abstainer, they'd already written me off

It's possible to make really good homebrew beer, and I did for years.

[gejohnston]

24. the second easiest to make

is an open bolt machine gun
https://homemadeguns.wordpress.com/
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/03/10/australian-police-seize-homemade-submachine-gun-drug-raid/
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/01/22/common-illicitly-homemade-submachine-guns-brazil/

[theatre goon]

47. Mead is extremely east to make at home...

...and is quite tasty, if you have the patience to let it age properly.

[Warpy]

50. A five gallon pail of barley malt was cheaper than a 5 gallon can of honey

and my ex was a drunk. Beer it was.

[skepticscott]

26. Prohibition was a near-total ban

And despite your headline, that's not remotely what most people you say are "jumping track" are calling for with regard to guns.

Are you willing to compare apples to apples in trying to make your point?

[friendly_iconoclast]

28. The gun prohibitionists have taken a gradualist approach, hence the calls for...

...an assault weapons ban and the attempted moral panic about rifles of post 1940's
design- a panic in the face of the fact that they are rarely used in crime.

[beevul]

35. What headline?

And despite your headline, that's not remotely what most people you say are "jumping track" are calling for with regard to guns.

First, what headline?

Second, in case it wasn't clear, I said this:

Why do some people who otherwise learned the lessons of prohibition jump track when it comes to guns, and blame the guns?

That means "lets discuss the ones that DO".

[skepticscott]

38. Um...the headline in your OP

"Banning guns versus banning alcohol". What other "headline" was there in this thread?

And the "lesson of prohibition" was not remotely that alcohol doesn't cause great harm. It does and continues to do so. It was that trying to ban it completely was not practical, and caused plenty of harm of its own.

As far as guns not being to blame, tell us that the next time someone stabs up a nightclub and kills 50 people with a switchblade within a few minutes.

[beevul]

40. Usually I just call it a title.

As far as guns not being to blame, tell us that the next time someone stabs up a nightclub and kills 50 people with a switchblade within a few minutes.

How about you tell me the next time a gun goes and does that all on its own, without being directed by a person making a bad decision.

Then we'll talk about blaming the gun.

[skepticscott]

43. You guys never get tired of that silly straw man, do you?

As if anyone ever claimed that guns were conscious actors, capable of doing things on their own.

The obvious point, which you are desperate to deflect from, is that the easy availability of guns, especially certain types of guns, makes killing people much easier than it would be with other kinds of weapons. And no, the fact that some people get killed in other ways is not a counter-argument. We have mass shootings in this country almost every week. Give us comparable lists of mass stabbings and mass clubbings, and we'll talk.

[beevul]

44. Its no straw man...

Last edited Thu Jun 23, 2016, 12:46 PM - Edit history (1)

You guys never get tired of that silly straw man, do you?

Its no straw man.

As if anyone ever claimed that guns were conscious actors, capable of doing things on their own.

As if I claimed that someone made that claim. On the other hand, how numerous gun control pushers act and the way they speak about guns, and most importantly how they apportion the blame TO guns and almost never to the person who makes the bad decisions...They frequently refer to guns as if they are not inanimate, and regularly apportion the blame to the gun.

Taking anti-gunners at their word, and holding them to it, is no strawman.

The obvious point, which you are desperate to deflect from, is that the easy availability of guns, especially certain types of guns, makes killing people much easier than it would be with other kinds of weapons.

Deflect from? I admit it that guns make killing people much easier than it would be with other kinds of weapons. I also know that that is one of the reasons the framers chose to give arms special protection.

And no, the fact that some people get killed in other ways is not a counter-argument.

That people have been killed by other things has NEVER been a counterargument against the argument that guns make it easy to kill.

Its an argument that rightfully attacks certain extremists who care only about gun deaths.

We have mass shootings in this country almost every week.

Only by the definitions that have been changed to tally a higher number.

Give us comparable lists of mass stabbings and mass clubbings, and we'll talk.

Repeal amendment 2 and we'll talk.

[Eleanors38]

51. "Next time" someone kills over a hundred with fertilizer and fuel oil. I've been told.

[Straw Man]

54. Blame.

As far as guns not being to blame, tell us that the next time someone stabs up a nightclub and kills 50 people with a switchblade within a few minutes.

Gasoline is a much more effective mass murder weapon than a knife. It's also easier to get.

An arsonist carrying a grudge and a container of gasoline sparked the inferno that killed 87 panicstricken revelers early yesterday in an illegal Bronx social club, authorities said.

It was the deadliest fire in the city in 79 years.

The terrified victims - half of them under 25 and all dressed for a night on the town - were trapped screaming and crying in the dark, two-story Happy Land social club, which had only one working door, a small window and no fire escape.

--http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/dozens-die-fire-illegal-bonx-social-club-1990-article-1.2152091

[SheilaT]

29. We do have laws about how old you have to be to buy alcohol.

Yes, they are violated often enough, but we have no laws of any kind to speak of regulating who can buy a gun.

We license drivers and register cars. At a minimum we should do the same for gun owners and their guns.

[gejohnston]

30. you have no idea what the current gun laws are do you?

but we have no laws of any kind to speak of regulating who can buy a gun.

Under federal law, 18 for a long gun and 21 for a handgun. Yes there are laws regulating who can have a gun. We have several federal laws. Tell you what, go to the next state and buy beer, then go to a gun store and try to buy a handgun, let us know what happens.
If we were to regulate guns like alcohol and cars, we would have to repeal every current federal gun control laws and almost all of the state ones.
You don't have to register a car that doesn't go on a public road, and you don't need a license to own it.

[SheilaT]

33. Given how easy it is for anyone to buy a gun, especially over the internet

the laws are meaningless.

I just feel that every single person who says we can't change anything or the laws are adequate are complicit in the daily gun toll that occurs in this country.


Other countries don't idolize guns the way we do here. Plus, they usually severely restrict who can have a gun. Oddly enough, they don't have the gun violence we do. Couldn't possibly be a connection, could there?

[gejohnston]

34. first, it is easy to buy anything on the internet

including heroin, which BTW kills more people than homicide. Either way, internet gun sales are still subject to the Gun Control Act and NFA. If you buy a gun online and it shows up at your door, at least one federal law has been violated, unless you are in Canada. Companies like Canada Ammo will ship to the door, or at least non restricted firearms anyway. Not sure how restricted or prohibited guns can be shipped.

Actually, most countries don't severely restrict who can have a gun. The gun ownership in France is about the same as Florida's and Iceland isn't too far isn't too far behind. Mexico and Venezuela are among the most restricted. Venezuela completely bans private ownership of guns. Chicago, New Jersey, New York, and DC have stricter laws than New Zealand, Canada, and most of Europe.

[skepticscott]

39. Do you realize how silly it is

to compare gun laws in individual cities with laws in entire countries with controlled borders?

[gejohnston]

41. you know how silly it is to assume coke and heroin dealers go to the local gun store?

Do you think the junkies in Trenton or Tulsa go to a Walgreens in the next town? Black market and smuggling is the same. Doesn't matter if it is drugs, jewels, guns, humans, exotic wildlife, ivory, or whatever.
Different criminologists did several surveys where criminals get their guns. They don't go gun stores, gun shows, or on line. France's borders are so controlled that it is impossible for terrorists to buy machine guns and rocket launchers at a Brussels train station and get them back into France. The Jewish people at the Kosher deli the workers at Charlie Hebdo will be relieved to know that. Oh, wait. I'm old enough to remember when Europe had a lot of terrorist attacks, mostly IRA, Red Brigade, Red Army Faction, etc. They weren't using bolt actions purchased at Hanz's Pawn and Gun. They were using machine guns.

Australia is the ultimate in controlled borders. The Australian Federal Police doesn't have a clue how many illegal guns there are. Ten percent of the illegal guns are SMGs made in basements.

Then there is Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela

[Duckhunter935]

37. I have purchased many over the internet

Each and every one had to be shipped to an FFL dealer and I had to fill out a the 4473 form and pass a federal background check prior to me taking possession of any of them. Existing federal law.

[theatre goon]

48. I have purchased one over the Internet.

For the most part, I find that it is just as economical to buy locally, once you consider shipping and background check costs, if you're willing to shop around a bit. I am, however, in a pretty gun-friendly town, so there's enough local gun stores that there is some competition to keep prices under control. I realize that's not the case for everyone...

[Eleanors38]

53. To add to the discussion, in Texas kids can drink alcohol...

even in a bar if the parents first purchase the beverage, then serve their child (of course, many bars bar kids, but that is their choice). The "biergarten" is an old anglo-saxon business model here where whole families went to taverns. This allowed parents to serve, if they wished, alcohol to their kids. It was a form of indoctrination which gave moms and dads some control over a powerful ritual over which they would soon lose all control.

My favorite biergarten in Austin is Radio Coffee and Bar. Lawns, big oaks, picnic tables, bands. Lots of families with kids, single moms, and dogs (sign of the times!). The oldest biergarten is Scholz', which began in 1866. It is a leasee, believe it or not, renting from the ancient Sagerunde Hall, a German social club which still roams the earth. East of here, some radio stations still have German-language music broadcasts. Galveston was the second busiest port-of-entry for immigrants, behind Ellis Island.

Edit:

[NaturalHigh]

52. Too logical to be understood by the anti-gun crowd.