Would the new laws prevent Newtown?

[Twiggett]

I bet seizing and destroying all known guns and making being caught with one afterward an executable crime would come close.

Right, just like having the death penalty as a possible punishment has decreased the murder rate to near zero already?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Nope.

Analyze this scenario: a person steals another person's firearms and uses them to commit a crime.

Analyze this other scenario: a person steals another person's car and drives around like a freakin' loony, eventually t-boning a family of 5 by running a red light, killing 3 of them and self, due to lack of wearing a seat belt.

Would a stricter law on vehicle licensing or ownership prevent a future occurrence similar to scenario b? Would stricter seat belt laws have kept the criminal alive so the justice system could spend weeks, months and years dealing with said car thief?

No.

 

[tyr_13]

I bet seizing and destroying all known guns and making being caught with one afterward an executable crime would come close.

I bet it wouldn't. But let's say that it would eventually. You have your 'benefit' side of the equation down, now how about the 'cost' side? Can you really not think of some horrible, terrible, things happening trying to enforce such a ban?

 

[Darat]

Folk remember there are plenty of other active threads to discuss general "gun control" issues, try to keep this one tightly focused on the topic put forward by the opening post - which is about the specific new orders/regulations/executive orders and what impact they will have. If it ends up just being another generic gun control thread it will be closed and Members pointed to one of the myriad other threads already discussing general gun control issues.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat

 

[Quad4_72]

Folks this is somewhat of a troll thread. Travis is just trying to make the point yet again that he believes all guns should be destroyed, and that is the only possible solution. I don't think he is looking for honest answers on new laws that could be put in place to prevent this shooting unless those laws specifically state that all guns are illegal.

 

[stevea]

What laws were these?

Wha - are you being purposely obstinant ?
Concealed carry laws were violated.
Laws against weapons on school grounds were violated.
Laws against murder were clearly violate.
Don't act the dunce.

--

If we eliminated every gun in the US would this prevent an insane person from committing mass murder ? Obviously not. We've seen recent examples of mass stabbings, explosions, arson, people being mowed down with cars. Some more insidious methods have been employed.

Is it worthwhile to preemptively violate the rights of every citizen to prevent relatively rare violations ? If that's the case then there is a much better case for the government to regulate your vehicle or a your fast food outlet, your grocery than guns. Perhaps you believe the government should regulate access to the internet or printing presses to pre-emptively prevent potential libel ? It's predicated on a presumption of bad intention or guilt.

The near entirety of pro-gun-control argument seems to be related to advancing an ideology, and only uses the recent tragedy for demagogic and alarmist appeal. It's just as bad as the post-911 legislation and similar ad hoc approaches to an imagined/invented/demagogued urgency. Just examine the restrictions on "assault rifles" (a nonsense category) then then examine the statistics on the very rare use of any rifle vs hand guns in homicides. It makes no sense unless the motive is to eliminate weapons and not to reduce homicides.


I find it humorous that people who claim to be "liberal" are instead totalitarians who reject nearly every aspect of personal liberties of others as inconvenient to their ends.

 

[Ziggurat]

So, what might be proposed here? Any ideas?

Yeah, I've got one:

What we can do is pass a law banning a bunch of made-up things that sound scary... as long as the NRA and Wayne LaPierre go apoplectic about it... gun control proponents won’t know the difference between this and actual gun control. And this will help protect our most vulnerable people out there: politicians.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Armed guards at the school maybe?

Didn't work so good in columbine. Clearly needs to be a heavily armed team in every school as one officer with a side arm is provably in sufficient.

 

[BStrong]

Of course. If the new gun laws are enacted, gun crime will disappear the very next day.

No, of course the new laws would "prevent Newtown" or any other recent mass shooting. These things take years, even decades of serious enforcement for these laws to become effective, to root out the caches of guns already owned, and to change the perception of guns already ingrained into the culture.

As one poster pointed out, these efforts are mostly symbolic, a way of saying "we're sick of this and we're going to do something about it." Because of our strong gun-loving culture, the first baby steps must be taken toward big, unambiguous... um... targets, i.e. things that make headlines and stay on the news cycle for more than a day.

But anybody who gives even the most perfunctory glance at gun statistics will see that military-style weapons are not the major gun problem in US society. Not even close. Not even rifles of any kind. Not knives, clubs or polonium 209. It's handguns. If we are ever serious about reducing gun crime in the US, we must address ways to keep handguns out of the grasp of criminals, drunks and mentally unstable people. Nobody addresses this problem because the solutions are so difficult and the ownership of pistols is so widespread, but if you're looking for the weapon of choice in most crimes, you need look no further than your own, snub nose.

Maybe this legislation is a way of "getting the foot in the door", and it is so obvious that nobody needs military-style weopons and large ammo clips that even conservative messiah Ronald Reagan said it many years ago. But such laws, while slightly better than nothing, are still a weak and nearly cosmetic attempt to address a problem that is much much bigger, and completely unaffected by any such laws.

Except at the time he said it, he was to the point that he thought he was the Gipper

 

[angrysoba]

Folks this is somewhat of a troll thread. Travis is just trying to make the point yet again that he believes all guns should be destroyed, and that is the only possible solution. I don't think he is looking for honest answers on new laws that could be put in place to prevent this shooting unless those laws specifically state that all guns are illegal.

I don't think it is a troll thread at all. Travis is asking a specific question about a specific law and asking whether that specific law would have prevented a specific tragedy.

You are the one derailing by insinuating motives for Travis writing the post in the first place. Whether he has such motives or not is irrelevant and there is no reason why he should be excluded from the discussion of his own thread on your say-so.

Travis, my instinctive feeling on this issue is that laws like this are designed to make it look like something is being done even if things aren't actually being done. Here in Japan, someone who was drunk wandered on to a subway line and got killed. As a response, the beer vending machines that used to be by the tracks in subway stations were removed and politicians and railway companies loudly congratulated themselves on fixing a problem. Of course, it was ridiculous to believe that people would walk on to the tracks in a drunken stupor after drinking beer by the tracks; those who did end up dying were those who were already drunk by the time they got there. So it was just a cosmetic measure and I think that might be the case here as well.

 

[Puppycow]

Didn't work so good in columbine. Clearly needs to be a heavily armed team in every school as one officer with a side arm is provably in sufficient.

Which is why I said maybe. I think the Columbine shooters spent more time planning than Lanza. Plus there were two of them.

Personally I think that it would be interesting to call the NRA on their bluff and let them try their scheme. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then the NRA would be discredited.

It would put the NRA front and center as being responsible for the solution, as the proposal came from them.

NRA's Armed Security Guard Proposal Kind Of Popular

 

[Darth Rotor]

Which is why I said maybe. I think the Columbine shooters spent more time planning than Lanza. Plus there were two of them.

Personally I think that it would be interesting to call the NRA on their bluff and let them try their scheme. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then the NRA would be discredited.

It would put the NRA front and center as being responsible for the solution, as the proposal came from them.

NRA's Armed Security Guard Proposal Kind Of Popular

As I have noted elsewhere, the high school where both my kids went to school had a cop there. Armed. School district paid for it. Public school .

The NRA didn't make this stuff up.

That said, each school district really has to look at what their risks are, and their desires are. I think home grown solutions will remain the best solutions, insofar as addressing what each school district chooses to do. I expect various security solutions to vary considerably. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Puppycow]

As I have noted elsewhere, the high school where both my kids went to school had a cop there. Armed. School district paid for it. Public school .

The NRA didn't make this stuff up.

That said, each school district really has to look at what their risks are, and their desires are. I think home grown solutions will remain the best solutions, insofar as addressing what each school district chooses to do. I expect various security solutions to vary considerably. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

Personally, I would have liked it if instead of making the NRA the enemy, the administration had brought them in and tried to get their buy-in on the proposed solutions. Letting them have their proposal would be one way to do that. I'd like to see if Republicans would cough up the money to make it happen.

I'm tired of the gun-control wars. I'd like to say "OK, we'll try it your way and see if that works". If not, then we'll try it our way and see if that works.

Right now a majority of people seem to be open to the idea of putting armed guards in schools, and the NRA proposed it, so it should be politically possible. Let's try it and see what happens.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Which is why I said maybe. I think the Columbine shooters spent more time planning than Lanza. Plus there were two of them.

Personally I think that it would be interesting to call the NRA on their bluff and let them try their scheme. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then the NRA would be discredited.

It would put the NRA front and center as being responsible for the solution, as the proposal came from them.

NRA's Armed Security Guard Proposal Kind Of Popular

And you think it matters? The NRA has been very effective at preventing things like the ATF from being effective so why would they have any reasonable expectation of any political blow back?

So what programs get cut to pay for this or do we raise taxes? I suspect it will be science education.

 

[Nessie]

Maybe increased security laws would have meant killing his mother would have made it impossible for Lanza to access her guns. But the only way that could have happened was if there was a key code access to the gun safe he did not know and he killed her with a knife or something else leaving him with no way of getting to any of the guns.

Maybe a cultural change would have had a greater effect whereby Mrs Lanza decided off her own back that she should have very strict security or no guns in the house as her son was experiencing mental health issues.

UK gun owners are very careful about preventing unauthorised access to their guns, such there has been no instance of a mass shooting with unauthorised access to legally held guns. So there is a chance Newtown could have been prevented by better security laws.

The UK has also banned rapid fire guns. If Lanza could only access rifles with a magazine capacity of three or a shotgun with a maximum capacity of two, or the pistols still allowed with a maximum capacity of one, there would be more intervals in the shooting for people to get away. Or each victim would be shot fewer times, so improving survivability.

So banning rapid fire guns could have helped. But really for me proper and rigorous enforcement of existing laws is what is needed before any new laws are passed.

 

[elbe]

Personally, I would have liked it if instead of making the NRA the enemy, the administration had brought them in and tried to get their buy-in on the proposed solutions. Letting them have their proposal would be one way to do that. I'd like to see if Republicans would cough up the money to make it happen.

I have a bit of a time trying to imagine the NRA working with the administration.

 

[leftysergeant]

My Civil guard idea might at least get a few crazies disarmed and change the way some of them think about guns as a solution to a personal problem. Just knowing that your neighbor is losing his marbles would probably help get some of them separated from firearms.

 

[Trakar]

I have a bit of a time trying to imagine the NRA working with the administration.

A better route might have been more direct appeal to NRA membership to try and get them to demand a more reasonable organizational approach to responsible gun safety and ownership, rather than an approach that seemed to position the organization as one of the primary sources of the problem rather than a potential partner in addressing the problem in a meaningful way. Of course, that would have required a long-term approach, and several organization elections to get reasonable and moderate spokesmen and leaders in place within the group. As both a gun owner, and a life-long member of the NRA I don't approve of either the demonization of the group, or the demons that the group has often put forward as spokesmen for the group, but implying that "I am a big part of the problem," isn't going to win the administration, or any of the gun control advocates, much support from those who currently are only giving the organization tacit support because they don't want all firearms made illegal, or made so that they are virtually impossible to possesses and employ in their intended manner (hunting, home defense, target shooting) which seems to be the goal of many gun control advocates.

 

[Dessi]

Remember, as messed up as Adam Lanza was he got those guns from his mom. So any new set of laws meant to address this issue really need to address her. So a new law, if it is meant to prevent future Newtown's, must in some way prevent Nancy Lanza from acquiring her guns.

So, what might be proposed here? Any ideas?

No, no amount of gun control, armed guards, restrictions on high-capacity cartrigages or assault rifles will prevent mass shootings.

In all seriousness, the US isn't going to see a drop in mass shootings until give the finger to the NRA and repeal the second amendment. We should really model our gun policy after Canada, and only issue guns to law enforcement, military, or people who require a gun as a bona fide occupational requirement.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Personally, I would have liked it if instead of making the NRA the enemy, the administration had brought them in and tried to get their buy-in on the proposed solutions.

If there's any blame for this animosity, it should be on the NRA. They've spreading the idea that Obama wanted to confiscate everyone's guns since 2008.

And frankly, given Obama's style of "negotiation" I would be afraid to have negotiations between Obama and the NRA as the way to establish gun policy in the U.S.

At any rate, even if Obama had endorsed the NRA's proposal, I'm extremely skeptical it would have significantly reduced the NRA's animosity toward the Obama administration.