Mr gryphon: Your last two posts were far too lengthy for me to reply to with any clarity or focus.
Of course they were. I cited actual facts. You had no response. Even after five pages of replies you still had no response.
As far as a 100% ban on guns, no one is suggesting such a ludicrous proposition.
No, but I am saying that that is the ONLY thing that has even a remote chance of ending gun crime. How do you think that will go down with the American public?
Mr gryphon: Here's the dilemma: If it is already illegal to sell guns to criminals, yet gun owners continue to do so, how do we change that?
Make it more illegal?
Ms Anderson should have prosecuted under the law as being an accessory to murder. You're right, we should enforce the laws already on the books. Put the responsibility squarely on gun owners, where it belongs.
So put the responsibility on gun owners who commit
ILLEGAL ACTS, right?
The general public grows ever more weary of death after death, massacre after massacre. If we gun owners continue to exist in denial, then eventually public opinion will change to the point where the Bloombergs of the world will have their way. Then legislation will be passed that we REALLY don't like.
Although it may sound logical to you, in reality that's not the way it works or is working. Even the anti-gun drumbeats after Sandy Hook gained zero traction. Not one iota. Despite the crime we have--and we will always have crime regardless of whether we have guns or not--America has become more pro-2A. More and more states are expanding their "stand your ground" laws, legalizing open carry, enacting Constitutional Carry, eliminating gun-free zones, mandating CLEOs sign off on NFA items, and much more. I assume you have been reading the MOC newsletter, so you are well aware of all of these pro-2A law changes across America.
Mr Tuctom: If my gun were properly secured in a locked safe
Objection, your Honor, statement calls for a conclusion by the witness.
stored the rest with a neighbor who had a large gun safe.
Kinda hard to carry a gun for self-defense when you have given them all away. I trust your friend had a CPL else you were violating the law.
Mr linux203: Compromise means that each side doesn't get EVERYTHING it wants. Gun owners don't get everything, and neither do the liberal gun haters. But if you didn't get everything you want (unfettered or unburdened access to firearms) that doesn't mean you lost.
Gun owners never get everything they want. We want Constitutional Carry across the USA. Period. Anything less than that is a compromise. We are always compromising. What you are suggesting, though, is a loss of rights, a loss of freedoms from what we currently have. As the Senate subcommittee said to Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings, we want an expansion of rights.
If you don't like my ideas, that's fine. Suggest some of your own. Put out specifics on how we can ensure public safety
How about enforcing current gun laws? How about enforcing current laws, period? The man that murdered Kate Steinle in SF that got all the news recently was a felon, had been deported five times, and was ordered held on ANOTHER immigration detainer, but San Francisco is a "Safe Harbor" city and they refused so they let him go free and he stole a gun from a federal agent and murdered Kate Steinle. How many criminals are plead down to lesser charges and put back out on the street over and over and over again? We've got murderers with twenty previous arrests who never spent a day in prison or even a day in jail outside of their booking time. You realize that only a very small portion of our society are violent criminals, right? How about we just deal with them and not persecute the honest citizens of America?
Mr gryphon: For some reason we Americans seem to think we have the only "free" society in the world, and that is a result of our gun culture.
Not accurate. It's not only guns, it's everything else as well. How about free speech? You've got people in Canada being prosecuted for hate crimes for doing book reviews that talk about Muslims and people in the UK being prosecuted for hate crimes for preaching what the Bible says because it talks about homosexuality. Although tangentially related to guns, you had the RCMP break into people's houses and take their guns without warrants. No one has gone to prison yet or even get fired, and no one will.
In some post you asked about what country is more safe because of guns (I tried to find it but overlooked it apparently), I started crafting a lengthy response offline. I made charts using countries in Europe and Northern Asia. Almost without exception the countries with more guns had less murders, and vice versa.
I also thought I'd mention that the US has a firearms ownership rate of over 110 while the US Virgin Islands has a firearms ownership rate of, well, we don’t know, but it is minuscule because they have very tight gun control. The US murder rate is 4.7. The US Virgin Islands murder rate is 50 – 60 depending on the year.
But you know what? None of that matters. I'll tell you a country that is safer because of guns, and that's America. Yes, we have gun crime, but we have more lawful self-defense uses of firearms. If guns were magically eliminated from the earth we'd have more innocent people getting violently assaulted and murdered than we do today. So America is safer because of guns, not more dangerous.
You want to talk about violent crime? Look to the UK. But you refused to address that. We might have 3 more homicides people per 100,000, but they have hundreds to over a thousand more violent assaults per 100,000 than we do. That's what being unable to defend yourself looks like. Maybe you want to end up in a hospital. I don't. It's a choice.
