I'm amazed.
Jun. 26th, 2008 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrThe Supreme Court actually managed to rule that the right to bear arms as defined in the second Amendment is an individual right.
Gee, it's only taken them 70 or so years. And they still haven't ruled definitively on restrictions of said right, just commented that restrictions weren't 100% out of the question. <sigh>
No, I'm not a flaming "gun nut". And I agree that there are people who either misuse firearms on purpose or thru ignorance.
But the same can be said of cars. And the solution *there* was education. Make sure you've got people trained before they can operate the things unsupervised.
Alas, all the "registration" type schemes I've seen make it too easy to have a list of who to confiscate things from when the local government decides to change the rules.
And it's been done. Here in the US. In recent time. For example, California outlawed certain types of rifles merely because they "looked scary" (that isn't how they phrased it, but that's what the criteria amounted to. The features singled out did *not* make the rifles any more dangerous than thousands of other varieties of semi-auto hunting rifles. They just made them "look military")
They then proceeded to say that you weren't allowed to sell them or send them out of the state, and you had top hand them over at the pennies on a dollar the state was offering as their "fair market" value. And they had list of owners thanks to a registration law they'd sworn up and down would *never* be used for confiscating the weapons only a few years before.
\Me, I'd go for a scheme that licensed folks to own or use a gun if and only if the gun safety classes required were as common as drivers ed classes and had lot of non-owners getting the certificates. That way they couldn't use them as a shopping list if they decided to get repressive.
And besides, studies have shown that kids who've had safety training aren't going to treat a found gun like a toy, while ones who've been taught "guns are bad" and not much more *will* do so.
Gee, sounds like the "successes" of "abstinence only sex-ed, doesn't it?
At *worst* guns are a symptom, not the problem. The problems are things like the drug laws that act as price supports for drug gangs (and make them insanely profitable). Our (lack of) social support mechanisms that leads to running with a gang looking like a better choice than staying in school or getting a job. And the economic mess that makes getting a job worth having so hard
It's like complaining that the folks in New Orleans didn't follow instructions before and after Katrina when for folks in their situation following those orders was an insane thing to do.
You hear a lot about machine guns and "automatic weapons". But in to 70 or so years since they started regulating such, only *one* that had been obtained legally was ever used in a crime. And that was a cop shooting his wife.
Illegally obtained ones? Heck, if you can smuggle in *tons* of drugs, a few illegal machine guns added to the load is nothing.
And, of course we have the media cheerfully helping the anti-gun folks confuse the public about the difference between automatic weapons (pull the trigger and it sprays bullets until you run out or you let go of the trigger) and *semi*-automatic weapons (one trigger pull fires one bullet).
Most hunting rifles are semi-auto. So are those guns that Bush and co were so keen on banning. Not because they were more dangerous, but because they "looked military".
The criteria were things like a pistol grip as part of the stock, A bayonet or bayonet lug. A folding stock, and capacity to accept a large than 10 round magazine. Have 2 or more of these and the gun could no longer be imported (could still be *sold* to someone else in the US though).
A large magazine isn't more dangerous, it's way too easy to reload the *normal* ones if you are aiming. If your aren't hen the folks you are trying to shoot at are probably safer than anybody else in front of you,.
The "pistol grip" stock? Doesn't mean you can fire the gun *usefully* one handed. It just give a more comfortable grip when used with *both* hand and your shoulder.
Folding stock? Doesn't make it much easier to conceal unless you also shorten the barrel. Which is illegal unless you file all those *expensive* papers like you do for machine guns.
Bayonet lug? Do you *seriously* see anybody using a bayonet in fighting? Even the army doesn't do that anymore.
But there *was* an important reason for making these rifles illegal to import. It's the same reason so many laws decades back targeted "Saturday night specials". It's because they were cheap. And certain people don't want cheap guns available. Because that means that an average citizen could have a gun.
Do note that most of the folks you see pushing gun control are rich enough to afford bodyguards and live in places with restricted access. Also note how many times prominent anti-gun types have been caught using a gun that was illegal under the very laws they pushed for for self-defense.
They don't want *us* to have guns, but they want to have them themselves.
There are a lot of interesting statistics out there. Like the way legal gun ownership correlates with a *lower* crime rate.
An it's odd how folks who used to get hassled by the cops (usually "driving while hippy" type stuff or the modern equivalent) suddenly have a lot less trouble when they get a concealed carry permit (y'see that shows up when the cop runs the license plate)
All the above said, I'm against folks getting guns for anything but sporting purposes unless they get the training to know when *not* to use them.
My final word is the much-malinged but very true slogan the NRA or one of their supporters came up with so many years ago:
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns"
We can't stop drugs, even in prison. What makes us think we can do any better with guns? Outlawing drugs has worked *so* well, hasn't it?
Gee, it's only taken them 70 or so years. And they still haven't ruled definitively on restrictions of said right, just commented that restrictions weren't 100% out of the question. <sigh>
No, I'm not a flaming "gun nut". And I agree that there are people who either misuse firearms on purpose or thru ignorance.
But the same can be said of cars. And the solution *there* was education. Make sure you've got people trained before they can operate the things unsupervised.
Alas, all the "registration" type schemes I've seen make it too easy to have a list of who to confiscate things from when the local government decides to change the rules.
And it's been done. Here in the US. In recent time. For example, California outlawed certain types of rifles merely because they "looked scary" (that isn't how they phrased it, but that's what the criteria amounted to. The features singled out did *not* make the rifles any more dangerous than thousands of other varieties of semi-auto hunting rifles. They just made them "look military")
They then proceeded to say that you weren't allowed to sell them or send them out of the state, and you had top hand them over at the pennies on a dollar the state was offering as their "fair market" value. And they had list of owners thanks to a registration law they'd sworn up and down would *never* be used for confiscating the weapons only a few years before.
\Me, I'd go for a scheme that licensed folks to own or use a gun if and only if the gun safety classes required were as common as drivers ed classes and had lot of non-owners getting the certificates. That way they couldn't use them as a shopping list if they decided to get repressive.
And besides, studies have shown that kids who've had safety training aren't going to treat a found gun like a toy, while ones who've been taught "guns are bad" and not much more *will* do so.
Gee, sounds like the "successes" of "abstinence only sex-ed, doesn't it?
At *worst* guns are a symptom, not the problem. The problems are things like the drug laws that act as price supports for drug gangs (and make them insanely profitable). Our (lack of) social support mechanisms that leads to running with a gang looking like a better choice than staying in school or getting a job. And the economic mess that makes getting a job worth having so hard
It's like complaining that the folks in New Orleans didn't follow instructions before and after Katrina when for folks in their situation following those orders was an insane thing to do.
You hear a lot about machine guns and "automatic weapons". But in to 70 or so years since they started regulating such, only *one* that had been obtained legally was ever used in a crime. And that was a cop shooting his wife.
Illegally obtained ones? Heck, if you can smuggle in *tons* of drugs, a few illegal machine guns added to the load is nothing.
And, of course we have the media cheerfully helping the anti-gun folks confuse the public about the difference between automatic weapons (pull the trigger and it sprays bullets until you run out or you let go of the trigger) and *semi*-automatic weapons (one trigger pull fires one bullet).
Most hunting rifles are semi-auto. So are those guns that Bush and co were so keen on banning. Not because they were more dangerous, but because they "looked military".
The criteria were things like a pistol grip as part of the stock, A bayonet or bayonet lug. A folding stock, and capacity to accept a large than 10 round magazine. Have 2 or more of these and the gun could no longer be imported (could still be *sold* to someone else in the US though).
A large magazine isn't more dangerous, it's way too easy to reload the *normal* ones if you are aiming. If your aren't hen the folks you are trying to shoot at are probably safer than anybody else in front of you,.
The "pistol grip" stock? Doesn't mean you can fire the gun *usefully* one handed. It just give a more comfortable grip when used with *both* hand and your shoulder.
Folding stock? Doesn't make it much easier to conceal unless you also shorten the barrel. Which is illegal unless you file all those *expensive* papers like you do for machine guns.
Bayonet lug? Do you *seriously* see anybody using a bayonet in fighting? Even the army doesn't do that anymore.
But there *was* an important reason for making these rifles illegal to import. It's the same reason so many laws decades back targeted "Saturday night specials". It's because they were cheap. And certain people don't want cheap guns available. Because that means that an average citizen could have a gun.
Do note that most of the folks you see pushing gun control are rich enough to afford bodyguards and live in places with restricted access. Also note how many times prominent anti-gun types have been caught using a gun that was illegal under the very laws they pushed for for self-defense.
They don't want *us* to have guns, but they want to have them themselves.
There are a lot of interesting statistics out there. Like the way legal gun ownership correlates with a *lower* crime rate.
An it's odd how folks who used to get hassled by the cops (usually "driving while hippy" type stuff or the modern equivalent) suddenly have a lot less trouble when they get a concealed carry permit (y'see that shows up when the cop runs the license plate)
All the above said, I'm against folks getting guns for anything but sporting purposes unless they get the training to know when *not* to use them.
My final word is the much-malinged but very true slogan the NRA or one of their supporters came up with so many years ago:
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns"
We can't stop drugs, even in prison. What makes us think we can do any better with guns? Outlawing drugs has worked *so* well, hasn't it?
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 12:10 pm (UTC)Take a Ruger Mini-14, easily available to civilians. Mod to full autofire? That takes about 5 minutes and involves adding a part you made in the basement with your power tools. :p
Gun control's a farce.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 12:38 am (UTC)The difference between the Mini-14 and the AR-15, which was banned, was as Shadow pointed out, cosmetic. The Ruger had a very traditional looking wooden stock and foregrip. The AR-15 had "evil" black plastic parts, including a separate pistol grip. The pistol grip actually makes it harder to shoot from the hip. Ease of 'hip shooting' was one of the reasons given by Chuck Schumer and the rest of the HCI posse for banning rifles with pistol grips separate from the stock.
Michael Kinsley gave a refreshingly honest assessment of the political situation around RKBA in the Washington Post years back. Here is, ahem, money shot:
"The purpose of the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee was pretty clearly to protect political discourse. But liberals reject the notion that free speech is therefore limited to political topics, even broadly defined. True, that purpose is not inscribed in the amendment itself. But why leap to the conclusion that a broadly worded constitutional freedom ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms") is narrowly limited by its stated purpose, unless you're trying to explain it away? My New Republic colleague Mickey Kaus says that if liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory."