7483

Your solution exists in a separate reality from the one we inhabit.

Except for the part where your solutions can actually happen?

Pointing out facts makes one a “nut”, but proposing solutions that can’t happen makes one a person who really wants to solve a problem.

Okay then.

7484

When the police find a bullet or shell casing, exactly how does a database of gun serial numbers help them? There is no obvious direct comparison to, say, car registration and license plate databases.

Also, what’s the point of joining a conversation when you spend 100% of your time being an asshole to the people you disagree with? Do you have a victory condition in mind?

7485

Good idea. We should put serial numbers on ammo and register those to who buys them.

7486

I’ve never understood why the Second Amendment is the one that just can’t be limited. My First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly are limited all the time. So are my Fourth Amendment rights related to search and seizure. The Second is just as eligible for reasonable (or unreasonable) limitations as the other amendments.

7487

Try buying a machine gun. It can be limited.

It just can’t be destroyed or removed.

The government can ban you from buying certain guns. They have and do in fact, right now. They can’t ban you from buying or possessing any gun, though (Edit: without just cause and due process anyway, felons and the like generally can’t have them).

It is. We can’t generally own a lot of arms. And unreasonable limitations tend not to exist for most rights. Unless it’s the 4th Amendment, which we seem to just pretend is a thing, because terrorism or something, I dunno.

Edit:

US Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” violated this guarantee.[1] It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated.

Or as the Court of Appeals said:

Section 7-2507.02, like the bar on carrying a pistol within the home, amounts to a complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense. As such, we hold it unconstitutional.

7488

I’m struggling to think of any gun restrictions / requirements that would meet with the approval of the gun lobby or find support among most gun owners. Can you suggest any?

To me, a restriction on e.g. high-capacity magazines is largely an innocuous restriction, one which has no practical negative consequence for any sort of legal gun use I can imagine; but gun owners seem to react to it like it is a ban on all guns. If that’s the unthinkable starting position, what’s the compromise?

7489

Cool, then let’s ignore the car comparison and just focus on limitations on other Amendments. My right to peaceably assemble is often limited by my ability to acquire a permit and clear other bars for a protest. I can be told where and when I can protest (see: kettling). These limits are imposed for the safety and security of the public, or so I’m told.

I don’t see any Constitutional issue with limiting firearm possession in public by way of requiring a permit or training or insurance. IANAL, but if you can limit one set of fundamental rights this way, what makes firearms special?

So, if I’m right and it isn’t a Constitutional problem, it’s one of political will. There I agree it’s a tough hill to climb, but a majority of Americans want change so it’s not impossible.

7490

As someone who is in favor of much stricter gun laws, I find the notion floated here that only people who don’t know about guns would propose certain things absurd.

Because it is not true.

In my personal case, I grew up with guns in the house, I went hunting with my father and grandfather several times a year. Short of the members here who served in the military I probably know more about, and have used and am a better shot with, guns than almost anyone here.

But the current situation is obscene. @ShivaX your position seems to be that the current regulations are sufficient and that there is no further regulation that is going to meaningfully change things.

The problem is, as I have enumerated here before, that the patchwork laws about gun ownership. I know I’ve brought up the Chicago example several times before, and for a good reason. Because we are seeing a continued push to erode what laws exist even in some places. More concealed carry, more open carry. Side note, anyone advocating for open carry can get fucked. Illinois has tried to regulate guns, but Indiana’s proximity to Chicago meant that many of the guns used in crimes could be traced there.

And @Enidigm I disagree with your position that gun fetishists have won. They want open carry, everywhere. The want the restrictions on magazines removed. They want all taxes on ammo gone. They haven’t won, in their minds. There is always more.

While I could get into the weeds about what policies would be effective, I’ll simply leave it that treating guns with the same level of scrutiny we treat cars is the absolute minimum standard. Also @Timex comparing vehicle deaths to gun deaths is, frankly, absurd once you look how many more people use cars and the amount of time they spend with them.

Also we regulate the hell out of what is acceptable on any number of axes, and lay minimum safety requirements about manufacturing.

As for registry, it would have a significant impact, because it would not only create ownership links, it would create traceability. If there is a common source for firearms used in crimes, or if a gun owner provides a gun for a non owner to use and they commit a crime? That creates enforcement there too. Because if the law says that Jim is on the hook legally in some way if he loans his gun to Bob, who goes and shoots his wife with it, well that is going to make Jim think a little more about lending said gun.

7491

Also when you consider that people dying in vehicle accidents are suffering accidents; the killing isn’t the intended use of the product.

7492

To be fair to shivax and others on that side of the argument, what they’re dancing around is just a flat statement that any restriction on a right is against the Constitution and that’s just the world we live in, because that’s how gun owners perceive that right. If there are unintended consequences in exercising that right, so much the worse for reality!

In other words, gun control is a fantasy that liberals spin themselves into a tizzy but cannot do anything about because barring a Constitutional Amendment there’s nothing liberals can do about it anyway. So take the bits of restrictions that (sane) gun rights groups offer, because it’s the best you can get. Focusing on widespread gun control is an “unhealthy” fantasy that will go nowhere and in any event drive gun owners to the polls.

Guns are just “here to stay”, they’re “part of America”, the “way things are”, whatever.

7493

I don’t see them (e.g. Shiva) saying that at all.

7494

That’s why i said “dancing around”.

Oh, i see your edit. Yea, there’s some huge lifting you could do if you just decided that all military hardware should be permitted to the civilian population. On some level, there’s actually not a particularly good reason to ban it.

7495

I must be misunderstanding that. Shiva’s position doesn’t seem to be that you can’t have any restrictions on gun ownership. It seems to be the opposite, in fact. What’s the dancing, then?

7496

Well, there is your first problem.

Remember the “gun lobby” is basically the NRA and gun makers.
Actual people are a lot easier to talk with about it.

Closing loop holes and the like has like 90% approval. The problem tends to be that the GOP will filibuster it or Mitch leaves it on his desk for years.

Training, probably not. Insurance, maybe. And I’d argue that getting a permit to protest is mostly BS as well, but your right to free speech isn’t necessarily defined by protests. If you force everyone who owns a weapon to pay a tax, that’s like forcing you to pay for a permit for talking in your house. If that makes sense?

Because to carry outside my house, I do need a permit and training and it’s not free. It’s also not $800 a year, but it could be in theory. Now if I own a gun and don’t carry it outside? I pay nothing.

In both cases it’s sort of a matter of “if you want to do this in the streets, you have to do X” which is probably constitutional in narrow definitions (you don’t need a permit to go yell at city hall, but if enough of you gather, you’ll be dispersed for various reasons of nebulous constitutionality). What likely isn’t constitutional is “if you want to do this thing period, you have to do X”.

7497

All i was saying is that restricting a ‘right’ is what’s at stake, not the bounds of that right. The current status quo is seen as the bounds of that right.

7498

Okay, but then you’re saying that there isn’t any achievable common-sense consensus between gun owners and everyone else, because the agents of the gun owners won’t let that happen. The NRA gets its money from somewhere. The gun manufacturers get their revenue from somewhere. The GOP members of Congress get their votes from someone.

7499

Sorry, I still don’t understand what that means.

7500

I did not. I’m saying certain things being suggested, are not constitutional and would never pass muster or even, likely, become law. That isn’t me agreeing or disagreeing with the suggestions per se (though I do, generally disagree with them, that is another discussion entirely).

If you want to make all guns illegal, that will not pass muster and it’s unconstitutional.
If you want poor people to not have guns, again, very unlikely to pass muster, likely unconstitutional.

That’s a different discussion than if those things are good ideas or not. I don’t think they are, others might think otherwise. The point is that legally, these things either wont happen, or cannot happen.

Like it would be great if Fox News couldn’t lie to everyone. There is no real solution to that problem unless they cross the line into slander or the like. We can discuss a bill to “make Fox News tell the truth” or whatever, but that bill is DOA and unconstitutional.

To some extent yes. Because it’s a losing electoral position. If you push real hard, you’ll get shot down in court, assuming you could even pass the thing, and then the GOP runs Congress and President For Life Tucker Carlson means rights and laws don’t matter anymore anyway. My opposition to a lot of gun control ideas is one of realpolitik. We cannot let the GOP in it’s current form gain power again, or we’re done.

Disagreeing and pointing out how things work is disingenuous apparently.

7501

There must be some failure of language then because in agreeing with you i seem to be perceived to be disagreeing. (note: don’t want to make a thread arguing about the meaning of the posts or posters, so i’ll drop that particular line of discussion on my side with this).

7502

The bounds of most rights are fairly established.

Heller solidified what 2nd Amendment rights are. I didn’t write it, don’t look at me. I’m just relating what SCOTUS said. And you can think they got it wrong. Four of them certainly did, but it’s precedent and the law now. And the current SCOTUS certainly isn’t more liberal than the one that ruled on Heller.

The NRA represents like 3% of gun owners. It’s a tiny fraction.
Hell, apparently a bunch of it was from Russia. But if you give them something they can point to and be right? Well that’s gonna get people’s attention. Say, $800 gun insurance, for example. Or banning guns you don’t like. Again, lots more people own guns than are NRA members, but they’ll listen if the NRA is telling them about gun taxes and coming for their guns and they’re not lying.

Thing is most of the time these discussions aren’t about a plan other than “ban the gunz” and then the law gets written that makes grandpa’s rifle and the piece you have at the store in case of robbery into “weapons of war” and then you’ve lost any chance of coming to an understanding. But that’s a whole other discussion really.

As Beau often says, sometimes it’s the messenger.

My apologies, I took it the wrong way. I do disagree that “The current status quo is seen as the bounds of that right.” Mostly because the current status quo hasn’t been the status quo all that long. I remember when if you wanted a carry license in Iowa you had to know the sheriff and have a good story. Then hope he felt like letting you have one. Now they can’t refuse if you pass a background check. So it’s certainly changed.