changes I think we should make

[gejohnston]

Last edited Thu Dec 20, 2012, 02:25 AM - Edit history (1)

here are my proposals:
---Cops should have the same as us. They shouldn't have tanks and machine guns.
Military can keep their stuff
-----each state develop a mechanism for private sellers to know who are doing business with, with incentives for complying and disincentives for not. Michigan's "clean bill of health" from the cops is a good example
---For ammo capacity, I would go with Bill Ruger's 15. OK, ten for rifles and leave pistols out of it. Have the government buy shit loads of ten or 15 rounders. Each 30 round mag you bring in during the grace period to the cops, post office, participating gun dealers, you get two legal mags plus 50 bucks. The mall ninja drums become NFA AOW, like pistol forward grips.
---Pistol magazines should be extend past the butt of the grip. Pistols with magazine wells that are not in the grip, should be limited to whatever is common in Olympic/ISSF. One exception would be antiques like the Mauser C-96 and other curio and relics.
-----Since we have an 11 percent tax on guns and ammo as it is, add another four percent. Keep the first 11 percent going to Pitmann Roberston environmental projects (losing it is a deal breaker, I would tell Brady and NRA to fuck off) and use the extra four percent on guns, ammo, accessories, and video games toward public mental health. For the mental health, we should tax more stuff. Move Tile 2 transference taxes from general fund to mental health and Pittman Roberston as well.
---Regulate silencers like France, Norway, Finland, and New Zealand does.
---Revise NFA SBR restrictions to be more "common sense." I have no details, but regulating a single shot rifle with a 15 inch barrel the same as a machine gun is not "common sense."
---Repeal the Hughes Amendment
---The Lautenberg Amendment prohibits gun possession by those convicted of domestic violence. To that life time ban, I would also include juvenile convections of animal cruelty. For other violent misdemeanors, five years.

[petronius]

1. I'm guessing you mean pistol mags should not extend past the butt?

I agree with a lot of this, but I'm not really behind the additional tax, as important as I think mental health funding is. As a general proposition, I think that when you institute a specific targeted tax it should fall on those who are particularly responsible for the problem being paid for by the tax, and/or on those who will most benefit from the services provided by the tax (the original justification for P-R, which I also support). There's no reason to think that gun owners are more likely to suffer mental illness, and the more I read about it I realize that the vast majority of violence is not committed by the mentally ill, nor are the mentally particularly violent in comparison to everyone else. So the nexus between guns and mental illness isn't really as strong as conventional wisdom seems to imply. Of course, another reason for the tax would just be to make gun ownership more expensive and thus less attractive - and that I definitely don't support.

I'd also drop the point about the police. I do agree that many police departments are equipped fr beyond the appropriate level, but again that's a separate issue. There isn't really a link between what police agencies should have and what non-LEO gun owners have. What I would do is restrict retired and off-duty police to the exact same laws as everyone else in that state or community...

[gejohnston]

2. yes, butt.

[petronius]

3. Sorry, that wasn't spelling snark (really!) - I think there's a word or two

missing from that whole sentence. But I got what you mean...

[ileus]

4. How about we meet you halfway....15's for rifles.

I'd rather keep 20's for my AR's but I suppose 15's wouldn't be that bad. (Assuming all mags were grandfathered in)

[CTyankee]

7. why does anything need to be grandfathered in if it could be dangerous to public safety?

Why not just give a date that they should be turned in and after that it would be illegal to own them and carry hefty penalties?

[gejohnston]

8. the fifth amendment for one reason

maybe the same reason Canada didn't do it with machine guns in 1977, or anything else requiring a prohibited license.

[CTyankee]

9. Tell me about the Canadian experience. What happened to those machine guns?

And were they identified as a problem due to the huge number of people owning them? Were they prevalent in gun crimes?

I really don't know the answer but your answer seemed so pat that I thought I'd dig a little deeper and see if we were talking about the same level of threat to public safety.

[gejohnston]

13. they started registering them in 1952

they passed a gun law in 1969 that created three types of licenses. Until then, they were regulated less than than handguns, which required a license since 1934. In 1977, machine guns require a "prohibited" license because they grandfathered any existing ones. Once the permit holder dies, the RCMP disposes of the weapons.
To answer your questions, no. The government was concerned with Quebec separatists and a First Nations movement like our AIM at the time, including some Mohawks occupying a an area to prevent developers from turning one of their sacred places into a gun course. (I would gladly turn in all of my guns if I get to take a flame thrower to every golf course to turn them into wildlife habitat.) That is the best I can gather.
Canadian murder weapons are divided evenly in 1/3 firearms, contact weapons like knives and baseball bats, and bare hands and feet.

[CTyankee]

14. so the analogy doesn't fit our situation. It wasn't as massive a problem.

it seems to me that the prevalence of sheer numbers of guns and the lethality of certain kinds of guns are a clear and present danger in our society and society has laws and courts to protect society. And we have standards for prosecuting those who break the laws.

[gejohnston]

15. I don't think any analogy works with this situation

To me, it is less about the number of guns as it is who has them.

[CTyankee]

16. Oh, I think the sheer number of guns has everything to do with it. The more guns there

are the more they can be used. It's evident from our experience.

[gejohnston]

17. there is a logical fallicy for that

so, why hasn't happened in Wyoming, Montana, or Vermont? The last school shooting in Wyoming there was with a crossbow or compound bow, depending on the news account. He stabbed a couple of people too.

[CTyankee]

18. If this is statistically correct, then two things: WY and MT have a lot fewer people and

VT is as close to a socialist state as we have. But I said "if."

[gejohnston]

21. there was a map that was posted

in another OP that shows it.
VT and WY are both small populations, are both are pretty socialist. Like Alaska, Wyoming taxes any natural resources that leave the state. Unlike Alaska, they use the money for schools and other projects. While big city schools are crumbling, the Jr High I went to is currently being torn down to make way for a modern state of the art Jr High to be built in its place. There is little privately owned land, most of it is public. The county I'm from is the size of MA in land area, with the population of 37K, lots of publicly owned wilderness.

[CTyankee]

23. Interesting stuff. thanks for posting this. I didn't know that much about WY.

[CTyankee]

10. don't we ban pesticides now that we didn't before? If something is found to be inimical

to public health and safety, that we hadn't considered before or becomes by itself evident, what are the 5th amendment problems? There are medications I can't take now but once could. I can't own slaves.

[jeepnstein]

11. None of those things are named in the Bill of Rights.

Arms were specifically spelled out, right after Free Speech. We have to figure out a way to keep arms away from the mentally ill, felons, and minors, without placing a burden on anyone's rights. It can be done. Darned if I know exactly how.

[CTyankee]

12. doesn't it depend on what you are grandfathering in? It doesn't mean ALL guns or

ammunition, just certain kinds after we have officially ascertained that those items are useful only in slaughtering people efficiently.

Plus, there have been limits put on free speech, which I am sure you are aware of. Why would the 2nd a. have immunity to being limited if the 1st a. has been?

[jeepnstein]

19. 2nd is limited.

You can't shoot anything any time you please. Murder, for instance is quite illegal. Most municipalities tightly control when and how a firearm may be discharged. It's the whole rights and responsibilities thing. The only difference is some seek collective punishment against all citizens for the actions of a very small minority. Kinda like us suspending the right to peacefully assemble because the Westboro Baptist Church is a bunch of kooks.

[CTyankee]

20. well, I don't think it is a "collective punishment against all citizens" when you consider my

examples: the medications you can't buy or the pesticides you can't use, even tho you might really, really want them and they work better for you than anything else on the market, etc, etc.

And last time I looked the Westboro Baptist church was still out there doin' its thing. Aren't they coming to Newtown?

[jeepnstein]

22. We're going in circles here.

My point is that arms are specifically mentioned in the Constitution and therefore have the same protections as speech. They never mentioned pesticides or medicine. Arms are a Constitutionally protected item. The only one mentioned.

I suspect the very reason the Founding Fathers included them in the Bill of Rights is to protect them from the kinds of people who are going about today trying to disarm the citizenry. And some of those folks are frightening in their disregard for rights and even human life.

The solution to this is going to be neither quick or easy.

[CTyankee]

24. FIne. Let citizens have their muskets. Just what the founders had in mind, right?

You have a romantic, rather simplistic view of the founders that I am sure suits you. Hey, it worked for them, right?

What if those founders faced armed, black slaves who rebelled against their white masters/citizens? Where do you think their regard for rights and even human life would be? Who would be "frightening" then?

I think the Second Amendment is a relic and our Constitution unwieldly in today's world, which is probably why new emerging democracies around the world are not looking to our Constitution to use as a model for their own.

As a matter of fact, in regard to seeking solutions to this problem. we should look to other constitutional democracies around the world for models. We can learn something from other modern countries, not the other way around.

Whoopsie! Just found this in GD: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022044792

[friendly_iconoclast]

25. Ahem:

http://election.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x316358

http://www.potowmack.org/emercore.html

...Virginia law set Negroes apart from all other groups ... by denying them the important right and obligation to bear arms. Few restraints could indicate more clearly the denial to Negroes of membership in the White community. This first foreshadowing of the slave codes came in 1640, at just the time when other indications first appeared that Negroes were subject to special treatment.

W. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro. 1550-1812 78 (1968).

In the later part of the 17th Century fear of slave uprisings in the South accelerated the passage of laws dealing with firearms possessions by blacks. In 1712, for instance, South Carolina passed “An act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and Slaves” which included two articles particularly relating to firearms ownership and blacks. 7 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 3 53-54 (D.J. McCord ed. 1836-1873). Virginia passed a similar act entitled “An Act for Preventing Negroes Insurrections.” 2 the Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, 481(W.W. Henning ed. 1823).

Thus, in many of the antebellum states, free and/or slave blacks were legally forbidden to possess arms. State legislation which prohibited the bearing of arms by blacks was held to be constitutional due to the lack of citizen status of the AfroAmerican slaves. State v. Newsom, 27 N.C. 250 (1844). Cooper v. Mayor of Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848). Legislators simply ignored the fact that the U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions referred to the right to keep and bear arms as a right of the "people" rather than of the "citizen". Stephen Halbrook, The

Jurisprudence of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, 4 Geo. Mason U. L. Rev. 1, 15 (1981).

Chief Justice Taney argued, in the infamous Dred Scott case, that the Constitution could not have intended that free blacks be citizens:

For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operations of the special laws and from the police regulations which they [the states] considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... [A]nd it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever, they went.

Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 4 16-17 (1856) (emphasis ‘added). In a later part of the opinion, Justice Taney enumerated the constitutional protections afforded to citizens by the Bill of Rights:

Nor can Congress deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel any one to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding.

Id. at 450. Clearly, the Court viewed the right to keep and bear arms as one of the fundamental individual rights guaranteed to American citizens by the Bill of Rights; which, blacks, who according to the Court were not American citizens, could not enjoy.

[CTyankee]

26. thanks. Is it all clear now, folks?

I just love that you posted that. All the gasbaggery over those wonderful 2nd a. rights to the contrary, such "rights" are shot through (forgive the pun) with real problems for people who tend to think things through logically with an eye towards history and towards destiny.

[friendly_iconoclast]

27. The historical answer has been to *widen* applicability of rights, not narrow them.

I mean, nobody seriously believes that the First Amendment applies only to speechifying
in the town square, manuscripts written with a quill pen, and stuff printed with moveable type
on a hand-cranked press.

Yet more than few people will tell you that the Second Amendment was meant to apply
only to firearms made with 18th Century technology. You don't like the 2A? Fine.
Amend (or try to amend) the Constitution to eliminate it.

Until then, live with it.

[CTyankee]

28. I'll tell you what I don't like. I don't like children being blown away by someone who

has a "right" to his weapon. I want to see some restrictions put on that right, since I don't think I can get an outright elimination of the 2nd a (which would be my preference by far). I don't like the feeling of living in a virtual Somalia when it comes to "gun freedom." And if you don't like that comparison, well, that is unfortunate...

[friendly_iconoclast]

29. I don't like that, either. I also don't like the Westboro Baptist Church assholes.

Ernesto Miranda was quite the scumbag as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Miranda

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_miranda.html

And I'm sure many undeniably guilty criminals have gotten off because they exercised
their rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments- but I'm damn sure not going to
plump for elimination of enumerated rights for all because a minority misuse them.

And, btw- what causes you to feel you are living in a "virtual Somalia"?
Is it crime- or the perception of crime? Rates of violent crime in the US
have declined remarkably in recent years.

[CTyankee]

31. and while we are at it, why does the precious Second have a qualifying clause?

You don't see one in the First, do you? There is a reason for that, my friend.

And spare me the gungeon talking points...been there, heard that. It's getting old.

[gejohnston]

33. all I can say is

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?pagewanted=all
Tribe knows more on the issue than I do. Based on his speeches, Obama agrees with Tribe and, to a lesser degree, the gungeon.

[gejohnston]

30. very few people in Somalia own guns

partly because of law, the other is most people can't afford it with a per capita income of $600 a year. The people in pictures are retainers for the local war lord. Then there are pirates.

[CTyankee]

32. I don't care if they own them or not. It's the state of terror to which I refer.

The utter lawlessness, life in a war zone constantly. Don't be smug. It IS happening here and we're getting to "failed state" status faster than I had previously imagined.

[gejohnston]

34. I'm not being smug but

have you watched the murder and violent crime rates lately? Check out the FBI statistics. Unless you live in a gang infested area of some of the cities, you are just as safe as you are in Europe.

[CTyankee]

35. Tell the parents of those children in practically all white, gentrified Sandy Hook, CT...

Please, how do you post that with a straight face? That part of CT is one of the most tranquil, beautiful and peaceful places in our state, certainly, maybe in this nation.

Dear god, how do you make such ridiculous statements on the heels of this heinous crime in a bucolic, picture postcard scene out of New England? Don't you realize how stupid that sounds?

[gejohnston]

36. statistical fact

race has nothing to do with it.

[CTyankee]

37. geographical fiction on your part. "gang-infested"? Newtown?

C'mon, buddy. Stop while you're not in deeper doo doo than you are in now...

[gejohnston]

38. I said day to day

read closer. I am in no way saying they are the same. How you think I was comparing the two escapes me.
So, would you like to address something in the OP?

[CTyankee]

39. It's a little late for the OP offering changes. There have been good ideas around for a long

time, long before this sad moment in time. Isn't it a travesty that the OP comes along AFTER the latest bloodbath?

And I'm not saying I agree with anything in the OP, by the way. My side has had solutions all along. Yours is just a wee tad late, doncha think? Like 10 kids lives late?

[gejohnston]

40. your side had simple answers, not solutions

and simple answers to complex issues never work.

[CTyankee]

41. Well, that's a matter of opinion. Plenty of countries have such "simple answers" and

guess what, those answers work for them. Why don't we look to them for examples of how stuff can work? We could learn something from, say, Australia or Scotland. No?

[gejohnston]

42. both of those were rare one time events

since they had few if any before hand, it's reasonable to believe that another would not have happened again for some time. Australia's murder rate was dropping before the law was passed and continued dropping at the same trajectory afterward.
Or we can learn from UK as a whole, where the use of guns in crimes increased.
Jamaica's UK style gun ban did not stop the place from making us look like Singapore.

[CTyankee]

43. Let's stick to Scotland. Please don't get off subject.

And as for Austrailia, the aussies were wise enough not to try THAT again and sensibly changed it. Not us, oh, no. We can't learn a goddam thing. We've gotta double down if anything. Yeah, sure, makes a LOT of sense doesn't it?

Who has the slaughter continue and whose has stopped? simple question.

[gejohnston]

44. post hoc ergo propter hoc

They had one in history. None before, none since. That is what horrified everyone.

[CTyankee]

45. I wonder why.

[jeepnstein]

5. Citizens should be able to own...

the same mags as the police just like your comment about them having the same weapons. I'm serious about that.

The rest of your positions are in the realm of the possible. I have my own opinion on what to do with the NFA and once I think it through a bit better I'm going to be more vocal about it.

[Atypical Liberal]

6. I don't think this is going to help with mass shootings.

The technology that enables these mass shootings to happen is:

1) removable, quickly replaceable magazines
2) high capacity magazines

And the better a shooter you are the more important #1 becomes and the less important #2 becomes.

Any of the mass shootings of recent history could be accomplished by a skilled shooter with a 7-shot 1911 handgun wearing something that gave speedy access to fresh magazines.

You can drop the magazine out of a 1911 with the push of a button, and slide in a new one all in one smooth movement that takes about 3-5 seconds.

I think we need to regulate semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines of any size. Rifles and handguns.

Nothing else is going to change the equation here.