Would the new laws prevent Newtown?

[Morrigan]

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.

Errr what? He asked a legitimate question, and he acknowledges that even despite his anti-gun position, these new laws might not have helped prevent the Newtown massacre. I smell complete bad faith from your part.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

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.

Repealing the 2nd Amendment wouldn't result in making civilian gun ownership illegal. It would require passage of laws that criminalized gun ownership (i.e. "gun control" laws) to do that.

My bigger objection to your approach though is that practically speaking we will never repeal the 2nd Amendment (or, likely, any other of the Bill of Rights). If you eschew all other measures, you are practically speaking endorsing the status quo.

At any rate, mass shootings such as Newtown account for a vanishingly small portion of gun violence in the U.S. Again, more than half of all gun deaths in the U.S. each year are suicides. I think it's wrong to establish gun policy only as a way of preventing a tiny portion of the problem while ignoring the largest part of it.

So again, I think the approach taken in the OP is off target (ahem).

 

[Polaris]

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.

**** Ronald Reagan. I find it amusing when I see his mug on FB with the "assault weapons" quote in posts by people who (incorrectly) accuse him of creating al-Qaida and (correctly) are disgusted with his War on Drugs just to score political points in an appeal to authority.

Is it so obvious? Nobody needs anything but food, water, air, shelter and friends. A lot of people want them, and a lot of people have them. Very few commit crimes with them. There has to be a way to keep them out of the hands of the (very extremely) occasional criminal and maniac without infringing on the rights of their law-abiding owners.

Agreed on handguns.