First off, they are not technically that difficult to make. The principal design of revolvers dates back to before the American Civil War. John Moses Browning designed one of the finest autoloading pistols a century ago which, other than materials, has not been significantly improved upon since. Smokeless powder dates back to the latter half of the 19th Century, primers to the first half and, of course, black powder is over a thousand years old.
Second, gun control laws, in their application in this country, have been inherently racist. My favorite example from a long time ago was a law in South Carolina which banned the retail sale, but not the possession, of any handgun smaller than a Walker Colt. You can bet your ass that the law enforcement folks back then assumed that any white person who was found with a handgun had to have traveled to Georgia or North Carolina to purchase it but that any Black man with a handgun had to have purchased it illegally.
Here is a second example: California tightened up its open carry laws when Black men were taking advantage of the right to carry openly (the same right that the Obama-haters are relying on to openly carry weapons to the health-care debates).
I believe it is no accident that the more minorities and immigrants live in an area, the tighter the gun laws.
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Having had the idea for years myself, this is the first time I've seen anyone else point out the class nature of gun control, how "gun control" can only mean gun control for the non-rich.
Historically, a basic measure of how empowered the people were was to what extent they were allowed to "bear arms".
I have an idea, no more handguns, only rifles.
It satisfies all the right to bear arms listed in the Second Amendment, and it cuts out the element of surprise toward unsuspecting victims.
You're a 7-11 clerk and you see a guy walking toward the door carrying a rifle. You have time to react.
Sure, people get killed with long arms all the time, but handguns by far lead the homicide parade.
Outlaw hand guns, and make possession a felony with an automatic prison sentence attached.
For rich and poor.
Karen, your idea is no good. Rifles are too powerful for short-range defense. Rifles are hard to maneuver inside a building. And rifles are of no use for personal defense outside of a fixed position. Rifles make it easy for the bad guys to tell who is armed and who is not.
Are you willing to make it legal to carry loaded rifles openly?
Finally, something is always going to lead the homicide parade, as you put it. Which is why the Brits are looking at pointy knives and beer glasses.
Outlawing it will work, though, about as well as efforts to outlaw other things. After all, outlawing the consumption of liquor worked between 1919 and 1933 and outlawing the possession of drugs has worked really well, too, hasn't it?
There was a town in Texas took the opposite apporach. Don't ban, require
that everyone own a firearm and I think even allowed open carry.
If memory serves people got real civil
and crime was reduced.
Bottom line if xxx are illegal then only criminals will have xxx. for xxx substitute guns, grenades, knives.
Oh, and only the legal civilians will be victims.
Eck!
Also: a significant percentage of people shot with handguns actually survive. The majority of people shot with rifles don't.
Even if you could magic away all the handguns (which you can't), are you willing to trade vastly increased lethality and effectiveness for concealability? A rifle doesn't require you to get close--you can kill from a distance much easier than with a handgun.
Also, like Comrade E.B Misfit says...even if you could magic away those handguns, then rifles will lead the homicide parade. You'd just be chasing your own tail with that kind of approach, until you're all the way down to fists and rocks.
Areas with more minorities and immigrants have more gun violence, so it makes sense that the people who live there would attempt to handle the gun violence by imposing stricter laws. In other words, you're attributing cause to effect in this particular example. It may be true that South Carolina's gun laws a few decades ago were carefully crafted to "keep the niggers in their place", but this ain't 1950 anymore. We got better ways of doing that now (rap music, gangsta "culture", and crack cocaine seem to be doing the job just fine).
Of course, while modern gun laws (as vs. decades-old ones) are attempts to deal with gun violence rather than attempts to enforce apartheid, they're dealing with effect, not cause. The real problem is a culture of violence fed through violent television, violent video games, and violent rhetoric from many of our so-called "leaders" and role models. We have a culture of violence here in America that has nothing at all to do with our gun laws and everything to do with the fact that we have become a thug culture. All that an attempt to ban guns does in that sort of culture is create a vibrant black market, and besides, as pointed out, it's not very hard to make a usable gun for urban use as long as you have access to steel plumbing pipe and shotgun shells. We have to address the cause - the glorification of violence at all levels of our society - before we can make any headway on effect - the violent crime that plagues our society. I expect to see pigs flying sooner.
- Badtux the Cause-and-effect Penguin
BadTux, other than the Brady bill, most state and Federal gun control laws are decades, expect in places such as CA, NJ, MA and NY. The trend is the opposite.
As you noted, gun violence is a symptom of a societal problem. Our lawmakers, though, have a very long record of trying to cure problems by outlawing the symptoms. That tendency goes all the way back to the Puritans who made it illegal not to act the way they do.
If lawmakers were doctors, their response to any medical condition would be to apply pain-killers so you didn't feel the problem. (Which would work until the gangrene from your cut killed you.)
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