Obama is coming for your guns!

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

The Notes are available at several online sites. Here's one: http://context.montpelier.org/document/178

Searching on the word 'arms' gives access to some summary of discussion of militia.

But there's no discussion of the 2nd Amendment. The Notes cover the Constitutional Convention, which did not produce the Bill of Rights.

Of course not, but there is discussion of militias and their need to be well regulated and why. A John has noted the idea of a standing army was anathema but that some form of defense was needed.

[merrylander]

Good Heavens Ike don't take away their phallus.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Good Heavens Ike don't take away their phallus.

'He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun'
'In case of accidents he always took his mom'
'He's the all American, bullet headed Saxon mother's son'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqh1nkv2lO4

[matteos]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

You agree to the basic idea of regulating gun ownership, and prohibiting both some guns, and some would-be owners. No need to have a great pissing contest over the details, we all agree in principle.

Is it a nickel's, or a dime's worth of difference between full automatic and semi-automatic?

I'd say it's a full dollar between something like a belt loaded machine gun and a semi automatic rifle.

But after those extremes we really are getting into nickels, dimes and pennies.

I do agree to regulating gun ownership and lament the way the NRA conducts itself. It refuses to give ground on any topic.

OTOH though you have the government also making ludicrous attempts at regulation. The ATF is trying to ban 5.56 ammo on the grounds it can pierce cops armor... Almost all rifle ammo can pierce a basic Kevlar vest.
This is the nickel and dime stuff I'm talking about. The government goes after military looking rifles, even if they're semi-automatic because they have their agenda. But reality is these guns are less deadly than a semi-automatic hunting rifle that uses larger .308 ammo. They don't want the 5.56 in pistols, so instead of banning the pistols (which I hear are cumbersome and not very good) they try and ban the ammo on the spurious grounds it can pierce a standard kevlar vest.

Now I'm no gun nut, I don't even own one, but I do believe in the right to bear arms. Can't we simply toughen up the laws against criminals, crazies and the young? Get rid of gun sales where guns are not correctly registered.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

You agree to the basic idea of regulating gun ownership, and prohibiting both some guns, and some would-be owners. No need to have a great pissing contest over the details, we all agree in principle.

Is it a nickel's, or a dime's worth of difference between full automatic and semi-automatic?

On the nickel and dime scale it's about 25 bucks worth of difference. Semi-automatic weapons fire is bloody. Automatic weapons fire is carnage.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by matteos

Why? You can still shoot up a school or a cinema with a shotgun. Not exactly slow reloading a double barrel.

Also there are people that do hunt with handguns (obviously the big ones). They are not just there for self defense.

Nickel and diming, this is exactly what you are doing, you are just more extreme. Guns are still legal, you've just banned the ones you think are dangerous. The exact policy I'm referring too. But you can slaughter scores of people with the guns that are still legal if you felt like it.

Now I agree that felons and people with mental health issues should not have access (People with a DUI? Why?). But I entirely disagree with banning types of guns (Except automatic weapons).

Gun rampages usually happen the same way... Someone goes in and shoots up a school. This should be examined. Maybe people under the age of 21 should not be allowed access to guns (we don't let them drink).

No...guns are still legal. Really? Who knew? Are you nuts? It's been examined to death. The only way to stop it is remove the guns. When some outsider misfit goes into a school with an axe at least everybody has a chance to run away. WTF is wrong with you?

I know I will never get what I want regarding this country's democratized gun carnage. But I will never stop fighting my ass off for it. We are, without question, considering our wealth and potential for greatness, the dumbest bunch of motherfuckers on earth. After one bad school incident, the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, the Brits virtually removed every goddamned handgun and every goddamned assault weapon from their environment. And now? Now our firearms death rate is 40 times the rate in Britain...40 TIMES. This is a stupid fucking country and we have the gun laws, fractured state and locally controlled educational system, and moronic for-profit, insurance industry windfall, health care system to prove it.

[matteos]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

No...guns are still legal. Really? Who knew? Are you nuts? It's been examined to death. The only way to stop it is remove the guns. When some outsider misfit goes into a school with an axe at least everybody has a chance to run away. WTF is wrong with you?

I know I will never get what I want regarding this country's democratized gun carnage. But I will never stop fighting my ass off for it. We are, without question, considering our wealth and potential for greatness, the dumbest bunch of motherfuckers on earth. After one bad school incident, the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, the Brits virtually removed all handguns and assault weapons from their environment. And now? Now our firearms death rate is 40 goddamn times the rate in Britain...40 TIMES. This is a stupid fucking country and we have the gun laws, fractured state and locally controlled educational system, and moronic for-profit, insurance industry windfall, health care system to prove it.

I remember Dunblane. Thing is. Going round shooting up schools was just never in our blood. That is why guns were banned, it was a shcok to the system. (Except they were really tightly controlled before, I think the act banned .22's the last remaining caliber controlled). It's still legal to own shotguns if you are certified (Most farmers do to control vermin). What would shock the USA in terms of atrocity? Nothing.

By the way, it is illegal to own a pitbull in Britain, because once a number of children had their faces torn off... We decided that you know... These dogs are bad. This will never happen in the USA (I heard on the news today another person who was attacked and killed by a pitbull because he was giving CPR to its owner who'd had a heart attack).

But England is VERY different. Most police are not armed, most people are not armed, you just don't get the kind of interactions and confrontations that you do in America. That doesn't necessarily mean you are safer... I've been in multiple fights in England (not of my own making). If you go out on a Saturday night in a town center there's a good chance there will be a fight at the end. I used to work and live above a pub in Bristol. At 2am I'd go upstairs and watch them at it after my shift. The cops would eventually roll up and arrest people. All of these fights are entirely fueled by alcohol, the cops don't need guns they just drag people who can barely stand up into the back of their vans and book them. You don't really get that in the USA (or at least I've never seen it).

It's a different culture and climate. In the USA, no way are the cops going to give up their guns and neither will the criminals. There's just no way US society will turn into Britains, no matter how much is legislated. Britain was never a gun society in the first place really even when it was legal. The US is. It's the mentality of the culture rather than the laws IMO which is why the US is dangerous in terms of gun crime.

[Ike Bana]

Where did I suggest that American police should not have guns? Of course American police should have guns. And American civilians should not. They ain't good for nuthin' but put a man six feet in a whole. And all too often due to the sick behavior of way too many American men...put way too many innocent women six feet in a hole.

And I'm sick to my stomach hearing about how this country should remain fucking stupid because we're not Britain, or Germany, or Denmark.

[Tom Joad]

This is surprising. I thought it would be much higher. Shit, almost everyone I know has at least one gun in their house. Maybe it's because I live in the south. Or maybe it's because there are so many paranoids out there that think Obama is coming for their guns that they won't answer yes to a survey. Come to think of it, anytime that I get a call on the phone from a survey I hang up on them. I think it's really dumb to tell some stranger on the phone stuff that is none of their Goddamned business.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans who live in a household with at least one gun is lower than it's ever been, according to a major American trend survey that finds the decline in gun ownership is paralleled by a reduction in the number of Americans who hunt.

According to the latest General Social Survey, 32 percent of Americans either own a firearm themselves or live with someone who does, which ties a record low set in 2010. That's a significant decline since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when about half of Americans told researchers there was a gun in their household.

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[Boreas]

The apparent paradox of fewer people owning guns than previously and of more guns in private hand than ever before is actually pretty scary when you understand that the reason for it is that the gun nuts, the militia types, the white supremacists and the sovereign citizens have armed themselves to the teeth and are itching for a fight.

John