The 2nd Amendment solution to gun violence

IsThisTheLife said:
Since motor vehicles driven by stupid or otherwise mentally-unfit people cause deaths and maimings in numbers which are many orders of magnitude higher than those by similarly stupid or mentally-unfit people with firearms ever will, I suggest that legislative efforts (in the US or anywhere else) to save lives would be better be directed at the former issue.

Or is someone going to argue that everything that can be done about road safety has been done?
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If only you had to have a license to drive a vehicle, if only there were restrictions on what kinds of vehicles you could drive depending on the kind of licence you had, if only you had to take tests to ge these licenses, if only there were restrictions on who could have a license, if only licenses were frequently revoked, if only vehicle owners were required to have insurance, if only the police stopped people who were driving and checked their paperwork and tested them for whether they were intoxicated, and if only vehicles had a purpose other than killing things. Imagine that. What a time to be alive that would be.
 
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If each day Americans spent half as much time handling guns as we did in our cars, then this would be the safest country on earth.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
If only you had to have a license to drive a vehicle, if only there were restrictions on what kinds of vehicles you could drive depending on the kind of licence you had, if only you had to take tests to ge these licenses, if only there were restrictions on who could have a license, if only licenses were frequently revoked, if only vehicle owners were required to have insurance, if only the police stopped people who were driving and checked their paperwork and tested them for whether they were intoxicated, and if only vehicles had a purpose other than killing things. Imagine that. What a time to be alive that would be.
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:thumbsup:

Nail firmly and effectively hammered in the top of its head!
 
Craig4 said:
I really doubt that Washington, Jefferson or Adams intended that the average person make this assessment. Especially Jefferson and Adams. They were both in France in the days before the popular revolution. I highly recommend "Jefferson's Crème Brule". It's about Jefferson's time in Europe after the revolution.
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Well, true. They were quite anti-democratic; so much so that I still find it amazing how much we all say how democratic we are.

I'll be sure to check that book out, thanks!


smartcooky said:
Really? Then how did 1/3 of spree shooters manage to legally buy guns when they already had convictions?
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I don't know. However, my point is that the very things you called for are already in place. IOW, we *have* what you think would work. So maybe the behaviors cannot be effectively addressed with further refining laws (which I think is a typically useless statist response).


crescent said:
Google the "boyfriend loophole". Some domestic abuse does not trigger firearms restrictions.
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That may be, but again the point is that it doesn't take a conviction of DV in order to trigger the law just an accusation which is more strict than what he wrote as a presumably good law.
 
IsThisTheLife said:
Since motor vehicles driven by stupid or otherwise mentally-unfit people cause deaths and maimings in numbers which are many orders of magnitude higher than those by similarly stupid or mentally-unfit people with firearms ever will, I suggest that legislative efforts (in the US or anywhere else) to save lives would be better be directed at the former issue.
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Some evidence for that claim?
 
IsThisTheLife said:
Since motor vehicles driven by stupid or otherwise mentally-unfit people cause deaths and maimings in numbers which are many orders of magnitude higher than those by similarly stupid or mentally-unfit people with firearms ever will, I suggest that legislative efforts (in the US or anywhere else) to save lives would be better be directed at the former issue.
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Well you just shot yourself in the foot there, since there are a LOT of motor vehicle regulations and laws.

Also, cars are not designed to kill.


ETA: Damn. Squeegee not only said it first but better.
 
Belz... said:
Well you just shot yourself in the foot there, since there are a LOT of motor vehicle regulations and laws.

Also, cars are not designed to kill.


ETA: Damn. Squeegee not only said it first but better.
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Indeed - driver's licensing, motor vehicle manufacturing regulation (emissions, mandatory airbags, crumple zones, etc...), and vehicle registration are frequently cited as a potential model the regulation of firearms and firearms use and ownership. IsThisTheLife must be a newbie to the gun debate, he was making an argument in favor of gun control while trying to do the opposite.

Tip for IsThisTheLife (since you seem to be a newbie at this): The usual replay then is to say that owning and driving are privileges not cited as rights in the Constitution, but the right to bear arms is in the Bill of Rights. That's an argument of limited effectiveness, as it assumes the constitution to be infallible, but if you want to make that argument we can tear it down as well.
 
crescent said:
Tip for IsThisTheLife (since you seem to be a newbie at this): The usual replay then is to say that owning and driving are privileges not cited as rights in the Constitution, but the right to bear arms is in the Bill of Rights. That's an argument of limited effectiveness, as it assumes the constitution to be infallible, but if you want to make that argument we can tear it down as well.
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A tip for you: No, the argument does't assume the Constitution is infallible, only that it is the law of the land. Implementing things that are unconstitutional in this instance opens the precedent to ignore it on other thins. Proponents of unconstitutional gun control should be arguing for Constitutional amendment first, instead of ignoring the primary document of law in the nation when it conflicts with their goals.
 
Hellbound said:
A tip for you: No, the argument does't assume the Constitution is infallible, only that it is the law of the land. Implementing things that are unconstitutional in this instance opens the precedent to ignore it on other thins. Proponents of unconstitutional gun control should be arguing for Constitutional amendment first, instead of ignoring the primary document of law in the nation when it conflicts with their goals.
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You're half right. Many do assume the constitution to be infallible. There are a good many fundamentalist preachers who claim it was divinely inspired. For them (and these are people with great political influence here) the U.S. Constitution really is the word of God.

That said, it is the law, but the 2nd allows for a great deal of regulation. Scalia details that on page 54 and 55 of the Heller majority opinion. I'll try to link to it later. The Heller decision did strike down some gun control, but the decision itself made it clear that the 2nd allows Congress wide latitude in the crafting of gun related regulations. It is very rare for gun control regulations to be struck down on 2nd Amendment grounds.
 
Hellbound said:
A tip for you: No, the argument does't assume the Constitution is infallible, only that it is the law of the land. Implementing things that are unconstitutional in this instance opens the precedent to ignore it on other thins. Proponents of unconstitutional gun control should be arguing for Constitutional amendment first, instead of ignoring the primary document of law in the nation when it conflicts with their goals.
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Imagine the horror if a right explicated in the Constitution required personal registration, proof of such before the right was used, the legal inability of a citizen to transfer that right to others, governmental oversight when the right was used!

Golly, we would have to vote on it.
 
autumn1971 said:
Imagine the horror if a right explicated in the Constitution required personal registration, proof of such before the right was used, the legal inability of a citizen to transfer that right to others, governmental oversight when the right was used!
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Yep. The SC would never dare rule that denying somebody the right to bear arms because they didn't have a licence amounted to an "infringement" of that right.
 
autumn1971 said:
Imagine the horror if a right explicated in the Constitution required personal registration, proof of such before the right was used, the legal inability of a citizen to transfer that right to others, governmental oversight when the right was used!

Golly, we would have to vote on it.
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Nice straw.

Then make that argument. The 2nd amendment comes out when the talk is about banning firearms of all sorts entirely, which would definitely violate the heck out of the Constitution.
 
Here's the thing, if we're being warts and all honest.

I do think there are enough Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Lefties/Whatever that are uncomfortable with any level of private firearm ownership to be a... discusable factor in all this. I can't put an exact X percent of Y level on it, but a desire to totally ban firearms isn't some boogeyman that gun owners have pulled out of air.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Here's the thing, if we're being warts and all honest.

I do think there are enough Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Lefties/Whatever that are uncomfortable with any level of private firearm ownership to be a... discusable factor in all this. I can't put an exact X percent of Y level on it, but a desire to totally ban firearms isn't some boogeyman that gun owners have pulled out of air.
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Many of whom Fear Monger as much as the Right Wing does on other matters so it a thing, a very misguided thing sadly.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Here's the thing, if we're being warts and all honest.

I do think there are enough Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Lefties/Whatever that are uncomfortable with any level of private firearm ownership to be a... discusable factor in all this. I can't put an exact X percent of Y level on it, but a desire to totally ban firearms isn't some boogeyman that gun owners have pulled out of air.
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Well, I'm only a casual observer of the US's gun culture so this is something I could easily have missed. Could you post an example of some notable organisation or group that is calling for a complete ban on all private ownership of firearms in the US?

To me that seems like a very extreme position. Off the top of my head I can't think of any country where all private ownership of firearms is forbidden, and a quick look on Wikipedia comes up with only 11 countries where that is the case, and most of those are small island nations.

Which isn't to say that I don't believe that it may be the case. There are, after all, plenty of examples of groups or organisations who do advocate for extreme positions. But it is one that I don't remember seeing espoused by any group in the US, so would definitely appreciate being pointed in the direction of one.
 
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