I wanted to highlight this because it brings up a good point. Most people don't know much about firearms, even in the U.S. It's admittedly a fine point, but it was semi-automatic, not automatic gunfire. The reason I point this out is because so many of our gun control laws in the U.S. are based on misinformation. When the U.S. Congress crafted the assault rifle ban in 1994, they literally took a book on firearms and picked out the ones that "looked dangerous." They did not use facts or logic in determining what to ban, because if they had, they would have banned Lorcin .380's before they banned AR-15's, because they're used in more crimes. But Congress, like so many people, were caught up in the emotion of "ban dangerous weapons" vs. the logic of "do something that will have a real effect on crime." The major issue here though is that the city of Aurora bans concealed carry of firearms. So, no, there were no law-abiding citizens carrying weapons in the theater because that act itself would make them criminals. However, even if someone had been armed, the rest of your points are valid. It's easy for all of us to claim how we would have done exactly the right thing without being in that situation. Almost none of us here have been in any situation even remotely similar. How about the greatest irony of U.S. gun control laws? In 1981 John Hinkley, Jr. tried to assassinate President Reagan in an attempt to impress Jodie Foster. Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, was shot in the head and was severely disabled. He and his wife became champions of stricter gun control laws, and in 1993 the Brady Bill was passed in his honor. Had the bill been in effect in 1981, nothing in it would have prevented John Hinkley, Jr. from purchasing the same weapon in the same manner he did and carrying out the shooting exactly as it happened.
This sort of perception surrounding firearms annoys the hell out of me. Congress basically wrote those laws on the way Hollywood portrays guns without any logical thought, and it seems a lot of people fear them simply because they are unfamiliar with them and uneducated (except for what is seen in popular media). The one thing I could add to this thread (because I pretty much agree with previous points raised against gun control) is that I'd like to see more firearms safety education out there. Even the simple classes at the local VFW hall. I don't care if you own a gun or not but I'd much rather you know how to be safe with them and your kids too. There's too many preventable deaths and accidents that occur every year with guns and I think removing the scare and unfamiliarity factor and replacing it with respect and responsibility would be a good step forward. Appleseed is as much as I'm aware of... sounds like a great concept too.
Here in Europe gun laws are becoming a lot more restrictive, however I believe every adult with a clean police record should be free to own any type of firearm he/she pleases. Although I'm not sure how he obtained it, it has been reported that Holmes had a sort of smoke grenade which I'm not sure if they're legal. Yes in this case the weapons used were purchased legally, however it is not difficult to imagine a guy such as Holmes with average or above intelligence, manufacturing explosives. Recipes are apparently all over the internet and such a device would not have needed to be sophisticated at all. If that fails, it would have been easy to throw a Molotov cocktail in a fully packed theatre and in the confusion knife people as they are scrambling for the exit. Bottom-line is in 1764 Beccaria said that by making guns illegal, bad people will still find a way to acquire them, it's only the law-abiding citizens who are left unprotected and that is still true today. As for Holmes pity the guy didn't have the decency or the balls to put a bullet in his brain.
It's been said that because of his body armor and good positioning and the smoke that an armed citizen with a gun might have had no success in stopping it, and that's completely true. But that theoretical possibility isn't enough to say that no one should have been allowed to have a gun, which is what the city of Aurora, Colorado says. The presence of someone shooting back at him might have been enough to get him to stop his own shooting and flee. I notice that he didn't shoot at the police assembled out back. He knew they armed.
As DCC suggested, everyone in a certain camp (especially outside of this board) seems bizarrely certain that having TWO armed civilians shooting in a dark, crowded, chaotic theater leads to fewer casualties. I'm suspicious that this doesn't just lead to more bullets flying and thus more deaths. Every counter-argument of this sort assumes an ideal-case defender. Everything we know about actually gun-related injuries and deaths seems to suggest otherwise: there's no reason to assume that your hypothetical defender here isn't a slack-jawed yokel barely able to not shoot his own foot off, let alone accurately connect with a moving, defended, and motivated target in an extremely stressful low-visibility environment. Add in the fact that based on what we see with current statistics, a gun is much more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting than in a well-executed defense scenario (sure, there is your 71 year old. There are also thousands of accidental deaths and injuries every year) and the costs seem to outweigh the benefits. An interesting question is this: could one enact a meaningful mental health screening process? The benefits are obvious, but there are any number of drawbacks: (1) The mental health resources in America and elsewhere are already overtaxed (2) While we obviously want to prevent, say, known sociopaths from owning a gun, prior-record screening does little for unknown sociopaths. (3) If we institute a "gun owners must be certified to be mentally healthy," at what rate would potential murderers be able to slip by this test? (4) Does this essentially penalize therapy? Will it disincentivize people from getting mental help because they would thereafter be banned from firearm ownership?
I saw a good article that summed this up pretty nicely: "The fact that the mass shootings in public places occur so infrequently illustrate how overstated the threat of terrorism really is." I don't like gun control laws, because the criminal use of guns circumvents those laws. I do like economic measures, like raising the price on guns and reducing their availability. I can buy an Ar-15 at a Walmart at 3 a.m. on a Sunday (seriously, I checked) but I can't buy a beer. I think that situation should be reversed. I also don't like the idea of a $100 pawn shop pistol being prolific. I do like the idea of a "gun minimum" cost of $300 or whatever to price them out and I think most gun owners would be happier if the government introduced a price floor, driving the value of their guns up. If I'm buying a new Kimber, the difference between $800 and $1100 isn't really stopping me from buying a top-of-the-line 1911, but the difference between a $75 S&W. 38 pawn shop special and a $375 tag on the same gun means fewer guns in circulation and a moderately larger obstacle to buying a gun that doesn't really involve "control". I would be in favor of minimizing the distribution channels, like they do liquor in the South: you can only buy a gun at a gun store. That makes legislating change much easier and a store who exists to sell one set of products is much more likely to comply with the laws. For me, the Wal-Marts, pawn shops, and gun shows are a huge problem because it ensures you can buy a cheap gun anywhere 24 hours a day. Also, I hate the "personal protection" myth in the US. Statistically speaking, you are infinitely more likely to have a gun accident (either you or a member of your household), than you are able to successfully defend your home against invasion with a firearm. I think a huge problem is the cultural emphasis placed on guns and the absolute lack of training for 99% of gun owners. The shooting classes and permit courses could be the difference between Trayvon Martin still being alive and George Zimmerman being a villain.
Here in MN, suppressors of any kind are illegal. Completely. I don't like that. Federal law is much more reasonable, where they allow you to purchase after registration and paying an excise tax. Yes, it is burdensome - but it's also not unreasonable. No where is it ever stated that exercising your rights as a citizen should be "easy" or "effortless". People are already accustomed to paying "gas guzzler" taxes in order the get exactly the SUV that they want, in addition to the price at the pump going forward. I don't see an increased tax on firearms and ammunition to be fundamentally different.
...and what would this do to prevent illegal guns sales? Nothing. Same goes for jacking up the price of legal arms and ammunition. Can you correlate the price of a weapon to the likelihood of it being used in a violent crime? Nice totally halfass numbers there (and what do you consider "training" anyways?), but you're on the right path. I believe part of the root of the issue is cultural, and another part is a lack of education/awareness.
Presumably this could be addressed by making it more highly penalized to buy and sell handguns or similar weapons outside of known and regulated distribution channels, and implementing more rigorous tracking databases of known firearms. I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of this at the moment (it seems to have plenty of loopholes. What about "lost" guns?), but it is very well possible to address that concern to some degree. The issue with guns is that one cannot start from scratch. If we didn't already have a large number of guns currently in unregistered circulation, this would be a much easier task. No one, for example, commits crimes via rocket launcher, because rocket launchers are very difficult to obtain for the average American civilian and their whereabouts (at least within our borders) somewhat well known. This is not the case for guns. They are already out there in large number and there are significant limits to what we can do to stem their secondhand circulation.
I pretty much lurk around here, but I feel very strongly about this issue and am compelled to comment. For me the issue has never been the Constitution. For me it’s always been about someone limiting me in the ways I can defend myself and my family. The bottom line for me is that criminals/random maladjusted assholes have guns. To me, this is just a matter of being on equal footing with the potential threat. I couldn’t give half a fuck about what the Second Amendment says about my right to do so. I have a CCW permit and so does my wife. I didn’t until I had someone else’s safety to consider other than my own. I always felt that being a big, strong guy with a decent pocket knife was all the protection I needed. I now have a wife and three kids to think about. I am not a part of the “gun culture”, although I enjoy recreational shooting from time to time. I own six firearms that range in function from home defense to skeet shooting. That’s all I feel I need. My two oldest boys are schooled in firearm safety. When my youngest is old enough he will be too. We treat it as just another dangerous item like a knife, bow, or chainsaw. I don’t lock my guns up any more than I would lock up my chainsaw or my cleaning chemicals even though all of these items have the potential to inflict deadly harm if mishandled. My children are taught safe handling practices, and I take them shooting when they ask. My kids don’t touch the guns without supervision, but I feel sure that my oldest could and would use a firearm to great effect to protect his family. The argument about a “well regulated militia” to me is the driver behind the amendment as written. As someone else posted, the Revolutionary War was pretty fresh in the minds of the dudes who wrote this. If you don’t think that is important, I would say to look at Syria and Sudan. I’m not in favor of psych evals for potential gun owners. It could be very subjective in my opinion. That system would allow for some very vague reasons to deny ownership. It just a little too “Big Brother” for me. The reason I am passionate (read “Loud”) about any form of new gun control laws is the Government’s tendency to inject themselves into people’s personal lives. This ranges from regulation of recreation drug use to the fact that there are still strict (but not strictly enforced) anti-sodomy laws on the books in Mississippi. I am also against seatbelt laws and the No-Smoking campaign. IMO, it’s not their place. Stay out of my house and out of my life. As far as Audrey’s comment on people with CCW permits living in fear, that’s actually the exact opposite for me. Being prepared is calming to me. I am not afraid of the next Hurricane Katrina. I have prepared my house and family for it. I am not afraid of fire, but I make sure my smoke detectors have good batteries and all my fire extinguishers are charged. I carry full homeowners insurance and would even if my mortgage didn’t require it. I am not afraid of being mugged or shot in the face when I go to the liquor store because I am prepared for that eventuality however remote. I am afraid of being helpless to save my family in any of these situations when there was something I could do to prevent it. The average response time for a deputy sheriff in my part of the county is around 14 minutes. There are assholes cooking meth (and occasionally shooting at each other) within a couple of miles of my house. If I’m present and breathing, neither I nor my family will be at the mercy of anyone.
The BATFE already does provide pretty heavy penalties for crossing their laws (especially on the sales/distribution side), and if you buy a pistol or have ever bought and had a firearm shipped in from another state you know how much paperwork and "tracking" there already is. If not, there's plenty. Canada's Long Gun registry worked really well for them too, eh? There's plenty of bureaucracy in place already, but it clearly doesn't work well. Besides, in light of the BATFE's recent "Fast and Furious" fuckup scandal, does it really make them sound like an effective agency?
The absolute wealth of inherited firearms from before records were kept would make this impossible. Most firearms are constructed to standards that allow them to still fire entire generations after being last used; the Mosin-Nagant is a perfect example. Canada's Long Gun Registry has already been brought up, and as a Proof-Of-Concept helps to show exactly many of the existing loopholes simply cannot be closed.
Umm, no you can't. NICS isn't open at 0300. And which Wal Marts sell AR's? I've never seen one around here. The fact that the evil AR-15 is being vilified is nothing but mass hysteria perpetuated by an uneducated media and an ignorant public. The AR platform is a civilan sporting rifle in the M16 family of rifles. It is NOT a military rifle. It is one of the most popular hunting rifles in the world and is ideal for small game and varmints in the smaller calibers like .223 and sometimes used for larger game like deer in the larger calibers. It is not some inherently evil bringer of death. Quite the contrary, actually. The biggest criticism of the M16/AR-15 is that the caliber of round (5.56 NATO/.223 Rem respectively) is not adequate for killing outside of short range and in that respect, it is far inferior to it's commie counterpart, the 7.62x39. Buzz words the media like to use like "semi-automatic" and "assault rifle" are just fucking stupid. Semi-automatic simply means that the gun goes bang one time for each pull of the trigger. When you pull the trigger, you get only one bang. Semi auto simply means that you don't have to manually eject the spent cartridge and operate the loading mechanism between shots. The term assault rifle is just plain stupid. Is there a love rifle? If I throw a potato at you, does it now become an 'assault potato'?
This may be true, but as far as I can tell, federal laws concerning secondhand sales are at the moment fairly minimal. Please correct me if I am wrong on this because I'm merely going off of what I can find via quick research, but it appears that there are no restrictions on in-state non-dealer sales of any sort of firearm among "eligible" owners (basically non-convict citizens who haven't been declared mentally incompetent). At that level, it is up to the state, and even there, secondhand sales are a largely unregulated area (for example, there are no specific requirements in Colorado to record such a sale or undergo any sort of background check, and the local authorities are prohibited by statute from keeping any sort of record of these sales). So the current state of the law appears to be that anyone over the age of 18 can by all the secondhand guns they want without any paper trail, as long as they don't but from anyone out of state. Provided that I had the means and there were people willing to undergo the sale in my state, amassing an unregistered arsenal large enough for my own militia would be no different from developing a large collection of Pogs. Is this incorrect?
No. I grew up in a house with guns (surprise) and of course own a few and none for the sake of paranoia or the need to protect myself (well, not yet- I plan on taking CCW classes with my girlfriend once she moves here). Like many, many other gun owners, mine are for hunting and target shooting. That being said, I am prepared to defend myself with what I've got. Maybe I've got a "just in case" mentality, or I'm willing to stand my ground?
Two things to consider here: 1. I don't know the answer to this but perhaps you can answer this: Does the media in Canada behave the same way as it does here in the U.S.? Meaning, is there ever such a thing as 'good news' covered by the media? I can't recall the last time I heard 'good news' on the radio, in the paper or on T.V. I think this leads to a mindset, at least here in the U.S., that things are dangerous and you should be concerned. I think the follow-on pattern is that people take measures to increase their perceived safety...locking doors, firearms, etc. 2. If I'm not mistaken, Canada's population is much more homogenous. Though, based on part of Dcc's original post to kick off the thread, there was mention of gang violence related to ethnic-minority gangs. Perhaps some of the behavior that has become commonplace in the U.S. is starting to manifest itself in the larger cities of Canada?
More dangerous than Canada? Probably. There are more people and more crime. More dangerous than, say, Columbia or Honduras? Absolutely not. It's not paranoia. For me, it's simply been time spent on the planet. The longer you're around, the more you see that it can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. After my son was born, I got my permit to carry (you don't have to conceal in MN) for the same reason I took CPR training: Just in case. You don't take CPR or first aid because you're in perpetual fear that someone around you will be injured. You do it because if the unfortunate situation ever arises that someone needs help, you have the tools to make a difference.
Disclaimer: I own a bunch of guns. Like, a lot. Most are for hunting, each with a specific purpose, some are simply collectibles, and a few are for personal protection. I have rifles, shotguns, and hand guns. Most of these I inherited from my grandfather and father. In my opinion, most of the discussion of this topic is always centered around "gun control;" and, that then makes it a debate for which there must be two sides, which then creates extreme positions on either side, forcing most normal people to find themselves sorting out the middle ground. But, really, I wish the issue was gun safety rather than gun control. The idea of gun control being implemented implies additional laws or legislation. That just seems silly, because in the types of crimes that become notable for stirring the debate, multiple laws, that are already in place, were broken during the commission of the crimes. And, has been pointed out, new laws aren't going to stop the criminals from having guns and aren't going to stop mentally unstable people from wreaking havoc. But, even gun owners, hunters and interpreters of the 2nd amendment agree that no one wants little children accidentally killed by a gun-in-the-home incident. Wouldn't it better to spend all the energy and advertising on promoting gun safety rather than gun control? It's certainly less polarizing and doesn't create near the massive governmental red tape and cries of intrusion on people's rights. We teach sex ed, driver's ed, sunstance abuse ed - can't we do a better job of promoting teaching gun ed?