Hillary Clinton says a gun buyback program similar to the one Australia implemented in 1996 is “worth considering” in the United States.Free free to steal the idea, without attribution.
“I don’t know enough details to tell you how we would do it or how it would work, but certainly the Australia example is worth looking at,” Clinton said at a New Hampshire town hall on Friday. ... The Australian government purchased more than 650,000 guns from citizens in the compulsory 1996 buyback program.
Another image, which is larger in size:
You can buy it on some swag here.
9 comments:
If the dip didn't know there is one small detail and that's our constitution is far different from the Aussies or British.
That and those they paid for were a pittance and offered prison time if they didn't.
If someone offered you small fraction the value of your house or car I bet that would go over like a rock.
Eck!
She would have to pay at or above FMV because of the pesky takings clause in the 5th Amendment. It'll be hundreds of billions of dollars, and that's without buying back cartridges, reloading gear, etc.
Get your bitter clinging gear here.
Not helping. The majority of guns in the United States are held by 1/10th of the population. The other 90% of the population is indifferent to gun rights, protecting them if a good argument is made, otherwise doing nothing. Threats of violence if a law is passed that gun rights advocates disagree with don't sway popular opinion, they just make gun rights advocates look like an ass to the 90% of Americans who don't care one way or another. It's like those Open Carry Texas jerkoffs parading around scaring people and displaying piss-poor gun handling skills, it just pisses people off.
The way the rights of a minority are defended in a democracy is by convincing the majority that the minority's rights should be defended. We can talk about the Constitution until we are blue in the face, but the fact that black people in the United States had no right to vote in most of the US from 1870 to 1965 despite the fact that the 15th Amendment had guaranteed them the right shows that the Constitution is just a piece of paper if the majority of the people are not willing to enforce it. In 1965 the black minority convinced the majority to protect their right to vote, but until that happened they effectively had no right despite the Constitution. The Constitution may be the fundamental law of the land but as the Patriot Act shows, the majority of Americans are willing to ignore it if they are scared enough. And threats of violence are *not* how you render them not-scared....
Funnily enough, reading her comment, it seems clear she isn't saying do it, just that something like that might work. No suggestion of not paying FMV, no suggestion of comply or go to jail, just the thought that it was an idea. Given the number of obsolete, damaged, ill-maintained or non-functional guns that show up in local buy back events, it might actually work as a stimulus, while likely doing little to reduce the base problem. I suspect a careful review of the Aussie program and the US situation would result in a decision not to proceed, but it makes a nice soundbite for the core Democratic demo.
As for the "energizing" the Republican base, no more so than Hillary does herself. I'm just not convinced that arguing for/against gun control is really impacting the election, on a national scale. The number don't seem to support that argument, while at the state level, there appears to be some correlation.
CP88, winning the White House is one thing. But a strategy that helps turn out opposing voters in non-swing states will make it much harder to gain control of the Congress. And, as we've seen for the past several years, without control of the Congress, jack-shit will get done.
Comrade, I heartily agree, that it does make it more difficult. However, those also are the same states with strong, gerrymandered districts that D's are unlikely to crack. On the whole, I don't love the statement, but it is honest. Given how we complain about lying politicos...
As I've said before, the Second Amendment will survive a while, but then will get voted down as the demographics favor urban and non-white voters. Call it about 30-40 years. What replaces it will depend on how things proceed. Am I thrilled with this prediction, no.
You do realize, CP88, that getting rid of the 2nd Amendment will take a constitutional amendment of its own: 2/3rds of each house of Congress and 3/4ths of the states? Not going to happen.
The dimwit Dems are focused on the White House. The GOP already now controls a majority of the states.
Not going to happen next year. 30-40 years from now? Remember that it took 30-40 years from the time that the right to vote for women was first seriously proposed, to when a Constitutional amendment was passed to give women the right to vote. Because women were fragile flowers too delicate in their sensibilities and too illogical and emotional to be trusted with something as important as the right to vote. [/snark]. The reality is that in a democracy, a minority can keep their rights only if they have the support of the majority -- as my example of the right of blacks to vote points out. "From my cold dead hands" doesn't build that support, it just makes gun owners look like scary villains from a James Bond movie. Especially since gun owners who are serious about owning guns (as versus the guy who has an inherited shotgun or revolver in the closet) are an aging minority of Americans, the vast majority of younger people have never held a gun and have no desire to do so.
Regarding the White House, the reason the states are gerrymandered to hell and back for the GOP is because of Supreme Court decisions allowing it (but only when Republicans do it). To reverse the gerrymandering, first we need a different Supreme Court. And the President is the one who determines the future composition of said Supreme Court. Without a Supreme Court appointed by a Democratic president, the rest of the states are irrelevant, because a GOP-dominated Supreme Court will just make sure the right to vote gets stripped from Democratic-leaning populations (thus why Alabama is shutting down almost all their DMV offices immediately after requiring a driver's license to vote) and that districts are gerrymandered to appoint Republicans. But you can't gerrymander a Presidential vote -- yet, anyhow. So...
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