^

Why? I imagine there are large amounts of people who own guns with the primary purpose of sport shooting, and self defense being secondary.

Guns aren't hard to use though, you can be a retard and be proficient with guns. Just like any hobby, you can go WAAAYYY overboard with it, but unlike most hobbies, you are playing with a deadly weapon that can kill yourself or someone else with a flick of a finger.

1/22/2013 5:20:46 PM

guns are toys

a majority of people that own guns for "self defense" have self defense fantasies

to purchase a gun one should be required to pass a proficiency test and each gun should be registered - basically the same model as with automobiles

different classes of weapons should require specific endorsements on one's gun operator license

1/22/2013 9:01:35 PM

Quote :

"is anyone still opposed to universal background checks, or have we at least agreed now that this tiny step is okay? "

Depends on how it's implemented. If done in such as a way as to preserve privacy and prevent any sort of registration, even de facto, then yes, I absolutely agree. I'd like to explore the idea of a firearms purchasing license or something. I don't know if there are compelling arguments against it; my gut feeling is that it might be a good way to approach the problem. I think I'd be OK with basically any option that imposes the requirement of the background check component, without actually performing a transfer of a specific weapon or type of weapon. (A current FFL transfer is composed of those two essentially separate components.)

Now, if you are talking about simply requiring all transfers to be of the FFL variety just like when purchasing from a dealer currently, then no, I'm vehemently opposed to that.



Now, how you enforce it without complete gun registration is problematic, but there is absolutely no way in hell that you're going to get that. I guess lack of ironclad enforcement options has never been seen as any reason to enact all manner of other legislation, so it might not be perfect, but it would be an improvement, realized at pretty negligible cost. On the other hand, most of the transfers you're looking at preventing, I would think, are with people who don't give a shit and aren't going to follow this law, either. I chalk it up to "good idea, and we should do it", but the unfortunate thing is that anything that is legally and practically viable/acceptable isn't going to be all that effective; anything that would be significantly effective is an absolute non-starter except in the furthest fringes of fantasy land. Not a reason not to do it--I'm just doing "expectation management."


^ There's no point in even discussing registration or anything that even smells like registration. It isn't going to happen.

(but holy shit would I love to have different classes of driver's license based on equipment, training, and proficiency)

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 9:06 PM. Reason : ]

1/22/2013 9:04:38 PM

Registration of some sort will eventually happen, I predict, with the intention of tracking the life of stolen guns and hopefully punishing gun owners who don't properly secure unattended weapons. It may be possible to mine existing databases to determine who owns a gun (and there may not be laws against this). The gov might even be able to buy the data from advertisers to integrate in.

It would possibly be implemented by tying into a background check system, or requiring a permit of some sort to transfer any weapon, or own any weapon.


[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 9:15 PM. Reason : ]

1/22/2013 9:13:29 PM

TheDuke want to be a criminal, registration makes that harder, so no registration

1/22/2013 9:14:38 PM

bullet is totally feeding the troll, and the troll is loving every minute of it.

why don't we all just come together and agree to completely ignore JHC. he's pretty fucking stupid, but even he is smart enough to know the things he is saying aren't true, or a complete distortion of the truth at best.

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 9:33 PM. Reason : .]

1/22/2013 9:32:55 PM

you are free to ignore him

1/22/2013 9:59:10 PM

Quote :

" with the intention of tracking the life of stolen guns and hopefully punishing gun owners who don't properly secure unattended weapons"

What is this going to accomplish? Now if someone steals my gun, I'm going to report the theft. If I'm doing something illegal, I won't. Implement registration to track guns and if someone steals my gun, I'm going to report it. If I'm doing something illegal, what's registration going to accomplish? Make me file a false police report? Say I keep it in a lockbox in my truck, oh no, where did it go? Surely you don't actually think someone is willing to commit felonies but would actually stop and say "oh wait, I can get in trouble if I lie about this".

If you want to punish people for failing to secure their firearms, you can do that without registration. It's not needed and its an invasion of privacy. There is no net benefit to registration.

1/22/2013 10:15:32 PM

^
Let's say gang member John in NY shoots someone and gets caught. The gun he used was stolen from a house in Texas. Registration-esque system would let this information be known, and potentially find the person who stole the gun in the first place, who they sold it to, and who John bought it from.

Gun owners should take securing their guns more seriously though. This could have stopped columbine and newtown, both of which used "stolen" guns from family members.

1/22/2013 10:38:30 PM

Quote :

"Let's say gang member John in NY shoots someone and gets caught. The gun he used was stolen from a house in Texas. Registration-esque system would let this information be known, and potentially find the person who stole the gun in the first place, who they sold it to, and who John bought it from."

Which works once or twice until the people stealing guns learn to file the serial numbers off. Traditionally, the next thing that suggested is that each gun be ballistically fingerprinted when it leaves the factory, but the problem with that is the fingerprint changes over time (akin to taking every child's photo at 3 years old so that we can identify them at age 80), and is modifiable with the same file used to remove the serial number. Sorry I get the idea, but it just doesn't seem likely to be useful. Certainly in the places it's been implemented it hasn't seemed to have done much, or I figure we'd hear more about it.

1/22/2013 10:55:47 PM

Then put serial numbers where filing it damages the gun, then look for people buying parts to fix that particular kind of damage.

1/22/2013 11:04:14 PM

get ready to be surprised: I'm absolutely OK with punishing people who fail to properly secure their firearms when said firearms are stolen and then used in the commission of a crime

1/22/2013 11:04:42 PM

Quote :

"^ Let's say gang member John in NY shoots someone and gets caught. The gun he used was stolen from a house in Texas. Registration-esque system would let this information be known, and potentially find the person who stole the gun in the first place, who they sold it to, and who John bought it from. Gun owners should take securing their guns more seriously though. This could have stopped columbine and newtown, both of which used "stolen" guns from family members. "

You're assuming the CRIMINALS will follow the law and register the weapons or when they sell them. Realistically it won't accomplish anything. As it is, the gun can be tracked to the original purchase and if the gun is stolen, it would be tracked back to that point. The only thing registration gives you is a list of the law abiding owners that owned that weapon at some point.

I agree with the second point but registration has no bearing on how someone secures their firearms. If you want laws on securing weapons, make laws on securing weapons. Registration won't help that.

1/22/2013 11:10:59 PM

^ i never referenced criminals doing anything. Registration just makes it easier to find the legal owners, as you have concluded on your own, which would obviously help in any investigation into who is dealing guns illegally.

And if owners know that stolen guns WILL be tracked back to them, they'll have more incentive to secure them.

1/22/2013 11:19:51 PM

Any real solution will do the following:

- Legalize drugs. Most gun crimes involve drug trade. Same shit as prohibition
- Make prospective gun owners take some sort of class or do some sort of social activity where you can see whether the person is a weirdo. Prohibit the weirdos from buying guns.

1/22/2013 11:23:50 PM

^^ the legal owners don't help you figure anything out. The ones we need to be worried about are the criminals who won't register. So basically you'd get the same relevant info you get now (original purchaser and whoever reported the gun stolen) along with an irrelevant list of legal owners that did nothing wrong. Again, no net benefit.

And I don't know about others but I'm more concerned with the financial loss than what MIGHT happen if some government agent thinks I might not have secured my weapon well enough (which I could always just
lie about).

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 11:28 PM. Reason : .]

1/22/2013 11:27:31 PM

having a registry of legal owners helps you figure nearly everything out

you can't seriously be this dense

1/22/2013 11:32:39 PM

^^ ha, how can you say not knowing where a gun was an when wouldn't help determine or eliminate possible suspects?

That's absurd and delusional. A registry obviously and definitively would help in investigating gun crimes and trafficking.

What you are really arguing is if the benefit from the overhead of maintaining this system is worth the theoretically small amount of cases where this helps. I'm saying it might, it should be looked into. You'd rather just not know at all.

1/22/2013 11:36:13 PM

A huge slice of our nation's hundreds of millions of guns won't be registered, no matter what laws are passed, and if we started significantly punishing (assuming they were somehow caught) people who haven't done anything, the backlash would be staggering.

1/22/2013 11:36:48 PM

seriously though, fuck the backlash

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 11:40 PM. Reason : who cares about a criminal's opinion about a law he broke]

1/22/2013 11:39:29 PM

^^ yeah existing guns would have to be grandfathered in for sure.

It would be a policy designed to more impact future generations, as the older guns went out of circulation.

I'm not a proponent of registration though, i just think it will de-facto happen once our gov. starts using data mining techniques currently rampant in private industry.

I'm more a proponent of looking into ways to making people secure their guns, even from their own family.

1/22/2013 11:44:09 PM

Incidentally, re: gun registration, I came across this today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haynes_v._United_States

1/22/2013 11:44:48 PM

I, for one, won't be registering shit, ever.


Or maybe I'd register a couple of red herrings, but certainly not everything.


And I'm WAY WAY far from the paranoid fringe of gun owners.



^^ I keep everything in a safe. I did have a couple of guns stolen while I was living out of a hotel for 6 months and didn't have any good means of securing them (in hindsight, I should have lent them to a co-worker, but at the time I didn't know them that well and frankly the idea didn't occur to me). It's not even from family; it's in case if a burglary. I keep one out and accessible much of the time (inaccessible from daughter at all times, though), but never left out if I'm not at home.

I'm not at all OK with punishing people who haven't done wrong for the wrongful actions of someone else, except in instances where any reasonable person would expect that, say, a criminal or mentally defective person would have easy access to them if not secured in some reasonable way. Otherwise, it would be like holding someone responsible for a burglary because his doors weren't [sufficiently?] locked.

Also, a high-quality safe is very expensive. Just about anything less is just a speedbunp. My safe is pretty basic...2 determined men could carry it out, or pry it open with large pry bars. It would be a meaningful impediment, though.

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 11:59 PM. Reason : ^^ I keep everything in a safe. Had ]

1/22/2013 11:45:30 PM

^ registration should be on the seller, you can't stay away from legitimate sellers forever.

[Edited on January 22, 2013 at 11:48 PM. Reason : ]

1/22/2013 11:48:06 PM

Quote :

"I keep a pistol on my nightstand every night when I don't have my daughter."

Quote :

"I keep one out and accessible much of the time (inaccessible from daughter at all times, though), but never left out if I'm not at home."

That's the second time you've mentioned this.

Okay, why do you need quick access to your gun to keep yourself safe, and then not need quick access to that same gun when you're with your daughter? I understand why you keep it locked up when she's around, obviously. I understand why you keep it locked up when she's around, obviously. There, I repeated it, so hopefully that will prevent these stupid shitheads from misinterpreting the question I'm about to ask.

So if you keep a gun that quickly accessible for defense when you're alone, then wouldn't you need that same immediate access to that gun when you're with your daughter? Why not just keep it locked up at all times?

I would think that your desired response time in your scenario would actually be more urgent when you're with your daughter than when you're alone. So what's the deal?

1/23/2013 12:40:57 AM

Jesus is absolutely right

/thread

1/23/2013 12:50:55 AM

"Inaccessible from daughter" does not mean "inaccessible from myself".

1/23/2013 8:22:40 AM

Duke's story about the hotel burglary is a straight up admission that his obsession with guns helped supply a criminal with weapons

1/23/2013 9:21:51 AM

1/23/2013 10:15:50 AM

Quote :

""Inaccessible from daughter" does not mean "inaccessible from myself"."

I never said it did. Just to elaborate for people like you who completely miss the point: He keeps a gun by his nightstand when he's by himself, while keeping a door open so that he can see would-be intruders, and says things like "by the time the cops show up, I won't need them."

That only leads to one conclusion: Response time is of the utmost importance to him.

Soooooo.....

If response time is that critical, then keeping a gun in a safe when his daughter is with him would obviously hinder his response time, as the hurdle he presents himself in order to keep his gun away from his daughter would also delay his own access to that gun.

These are two conditions that are in direct conflict with one another.

I'm also going to assume that he cares more for the safety of his daughter than he does himself (not exactly going out on a limb, here).

So if immediate access to that gun is so crucial for his own personal safety, then I find it odd that he has to keep it locked and stowed when his daughter is in his care.

So either there is something about his daughter that diminishes the importance of his desired response time (or maybe something about her that just keeps burglars at bay altogether)......or we can just admit that having a gun in the household doesn't make his daughter any safer. Either way, he's got some splainin' to do.




[Edited on January 23, 2013 at 12:30 PM. Reason : ]

1/23/2013 12:08:04 PM

you sure do like to argue for the sake of arguing, dontcha?

1/23/2013 12:11:31 PM

I would go so far as to propose that a dependency between one feeling safe and one's constant access to a firearm is, in itself, a mental illness.

1/23/2013 12:15:29 PM

^^^lol

Critical thinking skills ftw.

JHC and settledown should mate and spawn the anti-christ.

[Edited on January 23, 2013 at 12:17 PM. Reason : -]

1/23/2013 12:16:46 PM

^^I'd personally say that it's really just a security blanket.

A cheaper alternative would be to get a teddy bear or a night-light.


[Edited on January 23, 2013 at 12:17 PM. Reason : ]

1/23/2013 12:16:47 PM

once again, very sound argument. very solid, rational, logical thinking.

1/23/2013 12:26:20 PM

There's a lot of stupid in here...

1/23/2013 12:31:41 PM

I'm surprised that the more radical anti-gun groups in the U.S. haven't considered distributing doctored ammunition rigged to injure the person firing the gun

the Pentagon has done it for years in the Middle East

1/23/2013 12:33:31 PM

^No need; those anti-gun groups already caused several negligent discharges at gun shows recently; shot up each other in Texas, killed 20 children and 6 teachers up north, and went on a movie theater rampage. Their plan is working. They are rejoicing over their martyrs and "successes".

1/23/2013 12:39:41 PM

Quote :

"once again, very sound argument. very solid, rational, logical thinking."

If it's that easy to defeat, then you should have no trouble doing so.

I'm sorry not for the act of presenting logic, but for how that logic makes you feel. You obviously don't have a counter-point, or else you would have presented it by now. Instead you waste your time calling me an arrogant know-it-all whilst struggling to come up with useful synonyms for the word 'retarded.'

You're quite obviously brilliant. I mean, everyone can see that. That's why you keep a gun near you for your safety, and yet, by your very own admission, haven't practiced using that "tool" more than 4 times in the past 8 years. I would have thought that shooting a gun is a skillset that diminishes over time, but I'm quite clearly wrong. You've obviously proved that proficiency as a child translates beautifully into proficiency as an adult, even without consistent training.

I have a lot to learn.

1/23/2013 12:52:26 PM

The numerous real life examples of people using firearms in self defense indicate that you are incorrect.

1/23/2013 12:55:16 PM

^^you spent too much time on that

1/23/2013 1:03:12 PM

Not really. I was actually going to say that yesterday when you reflexively tried to say that you both never use your gun while simultaneously claiming to be proficient with your gun.

Instead, I stowed that one away and waited for you to go on another "smarty-pants" rant, which you assuredly did, because the pain of being illogical is burning you up. In fact, while you're reading this, you might feel a slight sting. That's pride fuckin' with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. You fight through that shit.

1/23/2013 2:26:30 PM

please stop trolling guy

1/23/2013 2:45:13 PM

Quote :

"^No need; those anti-gun groups already caused several negligent discharges at gun shows recently; shot up each other in Texas, killed 20 children and 6 teachers up north, and went on a movie theater rampage. Their plan is working. They are rejoicing over their martyrs and "successes"."

definitely, its a conspiracy. all of these false flag murders and deaths are done by anti-gun groups to take your guns!

(p.s. we still getting pizza at your friend geniusboy's later?)

1/23/2013 3:40:19 PM

wow, I totally glossed over that comment. wdprice3, you seriously believe Sandy Hook was planned by "anti-gun groups?"

1/23/2013 3:51:20 PM

(he's being facetious, guys)

1/23/2013 4:03:39 PM

A lot of people on my facebook timeline believed it, most of them had similar facial hair designs, so I couldn't tell if he was or not.

1/23/2013 4:30:34 PM

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50208495#50208495


so all the conspiracy people talking about how the ar-15 wasn't used and it was all bs to promote gun laws..... yeah they were right...

so the medical examiner who said they were rifle wounds... should be shot by a rifle so he knows what a rifle wound looks like and doesn't tell a blatant lie on tv.

[Edited on January 23, 2013 at 5:18 PM. Reason : .]

1/23/2013 5:16:20 PM

I believe that video is from the first week of reporting. The week where the only thing the media had right was "indeed, there was a shooting."

1/23/2013 5:37:39 PM

some of you people are too gullible.

1/23/2013 6:35:16 PM