Because there is no such thing as a "negotiation" in this context. A negotiation presumes that each side comes away with something.
What we have here is the gun control side operating on the basis of "what's mine is mine and what's your is up for discussion." That, Gentle Reader, is not a compromise. It's discussing the terms of a surrender.
So, gun control people, what are you prepared to give up in return?
If the answer is "nothing", then we have nothing to really talk about.
If the answer is "what do you want", then maybe we can have a discussion.
I, for one, would be happy to give up magazines over 30 rounds, but I want something in exchange: I want silencers removed from Title III status and returned to the status that they held in 1932. Which is to say that they were an unregulated accessory, just like grips and bipods.
The ones your girlfriends warned you about.
1 hour ago
13 comments:
I'd start from the position that would be a perfectly fine compromise. Suppressors are not evil, nor are automatic knives, and the regulations against them are stupid.
But the larger premise is false. ALL gun regulation laws over the last ten years have been in favor of gun rights. So it's not a question to ask what people who would like to see basic common sense community regulation of firearms ownership are willing to give up. We've given up an almost ridiculous amount over the last couple decades. The question is why can't the pro-gun ownership lobby take comfort in a constitutional guarantee, one that only three other nations in the whole WORLD has, and accept some limitations on that right that would reduce the number of firearms deaths and injuries in the US while still preserving a basic right to own guns?
The artificial absolutist position that does nothing but support the people who make money manufacturing firearms while doing nothing to provide communities with the ability to regulate firearms within their own borders doesn't contribute anything of value, and you, EB, of everybody I've read, are smart enough to recognize that...
No, it's not at all false. All gun regulation laws for the seventy years before that were in favor of more and more restrictions. When I was fourteen, I could have sent off a money order to Herters and bought any handgun I could have afforded. It would have been delivered, by mail, just as though it was a pair of shoes.
Before 1934, the same was true for silencers, short-barreled rifles, shotguns and silencers.
For 70 years, it was pretty much all one way. And not much has been rolled back.
How about we just repeal the 2nd Amendment and start over?
How about we just repeal the 2nd Amendment and start over?
How about I fart flowers out of my ass? Both are equally likely.
The pro- gun control party is giving up quite a lot, very frequently. Some of what we give up gets buried 6' down. Most of the rest gets cremated.
I'm not in favor of giving up the Second. But I am in favor of it being honored... to the point where we don't have regular mass shootings.
I don't know enough gun-controllers to speak for them; all I know is what I read in The Nation. I'd guess what they're offering is this:
Remember cigarettes? Cigarette smokers took the same kind of absolute stance that you're taking here.
Engineers are working to make everything in life safer. Before long, gunshots will be the majority of ways that people get hurt or killed. When that happens, the same social changes that happened to cigarette smokers will happen to gun-lovers. The sanctions won't be just legal, they'll be social. If you'd like not to spend the rest of your life as a leper, work with us now. And come on, you don't like those creeps any more than we do!
Speaking for myself this time, I'd like arms-reduction talks. Cletus gives up his fantasy-army gear, and the cops give up their Judge Dredd attitude. So sorry, this leaves the gun-control advocacy groups out of the discussion, but they weren't really contributing much.
Part of the problem is that most modern gun control proponents have no concept of the National Firearms Act of 1934 or the Gun Control Act of 1968, or the myriad state and local restrictions on carry and purchase of firearms over the last 70-80 years.
When viewed in the context of 1994 forward, it does appear that the Gun Control folks won one major victory, then suffered several setbacks, what with the AWB sunset and the rise of Right to Carry laws.
However, if we take the long historical view, American gun owners are still a long way from regaining even a fraction of what they gave up over the years.
Dww
Joe, if I had any confidence that the gun control side would be willing to reach a final agreement, I would be in favor of negotiating. But I don't and so I'm not.
I'm old enough to remember when the Brady Campaign was called "Handgun Control, Inc." and their position was that they wanted to register all handguns "as a first step". In reading their literature at the time, it was pretty obvious that they were not for handgun control, they were for a total ban. Losing there, they switched gears to assault rifles.
Guns are durable objects. They're not going away. And, unlike cigarettes and cars, there is a level of Constitutional protection. Which you're free to try and chip away at, but the anti-choice crowd has been doing that for 40 years and they've not convinced the nation.
But hey, if you really think that the cops will ever give up their ARs and Glocks, let's talk.
Comrade, therein lies the problem, both sides are dug in and the people in the middle are taking fire from both sides.
On that note, I assume we can agree that the 11 year-old killing the 8 year-old wasn't a mental health issue as much as a failure to responsibly own a weapon. So can we at least start doing something about the Darwin Award winners who ruin lives like this? The kid is screwed, the parents should be held accountable, but of course that probably screws the other kids more...but ...
Has any here ever looked at all the laws regarding forearms.
If you do it for all 50 states plan on reading bout 40,000 statutes.
Better yet plan a trip from MA to California with A MA compliant shotgun,
AR15 rifle, and a semi-auto pistol. NOTE: they will all be in locked gun
cases in the trunk of the car, No ammo with them per federal law for
transport. For fun I'll bring a Crossman 760 BB gun. Assume you will
have over night stops, gas stops in every state traversed.
Someone that claims its so easy and not enough laws can tell me the
number of laws and how many states can successfully lock me up for
doing just that if caught with them? Remember just going from here
to there.
Hint, soon as I leave MA technically I'm in legal jeopardy and not
with MA. Name any other piece of personal property you can bring
with you that's legal in MA that can bring that grief. That is how
screwed up the "lack" of gun control is.
Just one more law, this time we'll get it right. I keep hearing this.
Eck!
Eck, there's probably 500,000 statutes regulating automobiles, and they're regulated with safety devices out the yazoo -- locks so that unauthorized people can't use them, air bags, antilock brakes, air pressure sensors, the works. The result -- auto deaths per capita have gone down by over 60% since I was a kid in the bad old days. Wanting the same regulation of gun ownership as there is of auto ownership doesn't mean anybody except a few extremists wants to take guns. It means we're tired of the fact that 90% of criminals who are caught carrying a firearm are carrying firearms that were either stolen or purchased via a straw buyer, with *no* repercussions for the straw buyer who illegally transferred the firearm to a criminal and *no* repercussions to the negligent gun owner who left a gun unsecured when he was not present. Even in Israel, guns are licensed so that the official owner is known at all times and if your gun is stolen and used in a crime you better have a broken gun safe to show for it, or you are going to *jail* for arming criminals. But anytime anybody proposes any such thing here in America, it's all, "Nazis! Socialists! Yur cummin fer mah gunz!".
Heck, we've even made it illegal to *track* the straw buyers. And the fact that more Americans have been killed by toddlers with guns this year than by terrorists... doesn't that statistic make you step back and say, "man, we need some law that says you need to secure your guns when you're not carrying them"? If a toddler shoots and kills someone with your weapon, you should go to jail for *murder*. Instead everybody tut-tuts and says "accidents happen". For realz?
Wanting repercussions for people who don't properly secure and handle guns and making it possible to track straw buyers who illegally sell guns to criminals doesn't mean you want to take guns away, no more than drunk driving checkpoints mean you want to take cars away. Just sayin'. Sure, there's a tiny bunch of extremists who want Australia. But we aren't Australia, we *do* have the 2nd Amendment, so yes, there *is* a happy medium there -- that nobody wants to touch, because it doesn't satisfy the extremists on *either* side of the discussion. SIGH.
Tux,
Two liitle bits of fact.
One is average tome to crime for criminal guns those being stolen is in excess
of 8.5 years.
The other is percapita, "gun Crime" has decreased. Of course in cities with the strongest laws its has increased.
Straw purchase is much less a factor as criminals don't buy them.
There are fewer statues on automobiles and they are more consistent. You can drive your car from anywhere to anywhere a remarkable amount of legal consistency.
As far as automobile laws go. I do not require a license to own a car. I do not require training to own a car. I do not need insurance to own a car. I do not have to register that car. I can drive it without a seat belt and even talk on a cell phone doing it. It can smoke, leak and have light out. Don't even have to pay excise taxes in most places on it. All I have to do is keep it on the back 40 and never cross a public road.
Eck!
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