May 17, 2023 By Michael Weymouth
As gun violence continues unabated in our country, it has become clear that the Republican Party has no intention of doing anything about it, short of offering thoughts and prayers to the victims’ families. That and a plethora of useless bromides such as “the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The roots of the modern gun debate go back to the 1963, Kennedy assassination, when Democratic senator Thomas Dodd from Connecticut introduced legislation restricting the sale of mail order rifles. Shortly thereafter President Lyndon Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton signed the Assault Weapons Ban, which lasted ten years. It was allowed to expire under President George W. Bush. As a result, 20 million assault weapons are now in the hands of American gun owners.
It is clear that the Democratic Party has done its best to limit the sales of assault weapons, as well as to legislate common sense gun laws, while the Republican Party has done nothing but oppose them.
It hasn’t always been this way.
In fact, two of the icons of the Republican Party actually held opinions about gun control that were diametrically opposed to positions held by today’s Republican Party.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon SCOTUS appointee said of the Second amendment, “The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies-the militia-would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”
One can hardly imagine that opinion coming from today’s Supreme Court, which has adhered to a much narrower interpretation of the Second Amendment. Compare the Court’s recent ruling that allowed New York citizens to openly carry guns, to comments made by President Ronald Reagan in 1967: “There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today a civilian should be carrying a loaded weapon.”
Burger’s and Reagan’s comments beg the question: what happened to the Republican Party?
The answer is the NRA and its 5 million members, most of whom vote solid Republican, and, as Burger pointed out, the gun industry’s lobby, which contributes millions of dollars to Republican politicians each year. The result is a constant Republican drumbeat that Democrats want to take away all guns. This is total hogwash.
In the meantime, American children fear going to school and their parents fear they will never see them again as their kids board the school bus in the morning.
Today’s Republican Party has a lot to answer for and hopefully they will wake up to the damage they have done by failing to deal with this important issue. A good start will be for every American voter to condition his or her vote on how committed a candidate is to revisiting the Second Amendment and how it might be amended to better serve and protect the American people.
There should be no greater motivation than the fact that there have already been 202 mass shootings in 2023, more than one a day.
Rather than simply blaming Republicans, let’s look at the plethora of causes of gun violence – among them the breakdown of the family, a welfare system that promotes absentee fathers, and Democratic attorneys general who don’t prosecute criminals.
Indeed. It is a rare murder in my state where the reporter covering it doesn’t end the story by saying and the suspect has a long history of violent crime. We also need to return to the practice of putting those who are so mentally ill as to be a threat in psychiatric hospitals. The Parkland, Highland Park, Uvalde shooters ALL had histories (indeed virtually every mass shooter) that, in times past, would’ve landed them permanently in a psychiatric hospital. It is very disturbing how all that was swept under the rug in Parkland, but then it somehow became the NRA’s fault.
Go back to your history books and get your facts straight this puff piece is nothing more than a tout of lies meant to sway those who have done enough fact checking so before you automatically throw your full belief in this rhetoric check your facts people and look into the history of the second amendment this is absolute dribble
Absolutely
I leave the readers a link to an article rebutting the retired SC Justice’s remarks.
“That Warren Burger Quote Gun Grabbers Love Is Ahistorical — Not To Mention Sort Of Fake”
https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/27/that-warren-burger-quote-gun-grabbers-love-is-ahistorical-not-to-mention-sort-of-fake/
I also point out that the California Governor was responding to an incident where members of the Black Panther Party staged a protest, and had just moments before been walking around the steps of the State Capitol with loaded weapons, some actually entering into the Assembly Chamber while legislators were in session. This resulted in the BIPARTISAN SUPPORTED Mulford Act, that banned open carry state wide in California.
I leave it to the readers to make up their minds about the agenda of the author.
Re: “The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment”
No need for the “gun lobby’s interpretation”. The correct “interpretation” is clearly stated in the Preamble to the Bill of Rights where it says “The convention of a number of states having at the time of their adopting of the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse, of its powers that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added”. Note that when the Second Amendment was written, every weapon was a weapon of war, there were no restrictions on the private ownership of weapons by law abiding, private citizens and the citizen militia (i.e. the people) were equally matched with the Continental Army. After all, if they weren’t equally matched, it would be pretty hard to deter or “prevent misconstruction or abuse” of the government’s powers – so in reality, the citizen militia of today should have the same firearms as the current US military. Unfortunately we are no longer equally matched because we have let our gun rights be eroded by buying into this notion if we just compromise to accommodate the people who – for whatever reason – don’t like guns they will quit trying to take away our gun rights. History has shown that no matter how much we compromise, it’s never enough so we need to stop compromising.
Re: ” there have already been 202 mass shootings in 2023″
That number comes from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) – an anti-gun organization with an agenda that is often quoted by the mainstream media that claimed there were 610 mass shootings in 2020 when the FBI statistics said there were 40. The difference is the GVA calls them “mass shootings” and the FBI calls them “active shooter incidents” and excludes gang and drug and other criminal related shootings and the news media exploits the ambiguity to leave a false impression of widespread mass murders involving innocent civilians and justifies it by claiming the FBI doesn’t have a definition of “mass shootings” that contradicts theirs.
Re: “The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies-the militia-would be maintained for the defense of the state”
If that was true it would have said the right of the “state armies” or “state militias” and not the right of the “people”
the fraud perpetrated upon the American populace is not the NRA version of the 2nd Amendment, but the current idea that the well regulated militia must mean government regulated. It is the absolute height of stupidity to believe that the founding fathers of this nation would not only write, but ratify, an Amendment in the Bill of Rights pertaining to no government infringement, whatsoever, of individual rights, but leave that one single Amendment in there that only guarantees the right of the government to have arms………..after they had just won a war for independence from their government that tried to take their arms.
Klamath Falls Herald and News: Sunday, October 22, 2017/Letters To The Editor
‘Gun violence’ a term that means nothing
With total contempt I read Daniel Hernandez’s Oct. 8 elitist anti-gun “LBJ/KGB” style commentary: “For gun reform, thoughts and prayers don’t work-laws do.” The distorted term “gun violence” was pontificated six times! Comrade V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky would have called this writer a “useful idiot.” With the recent horrific Oct. 1 massacre of 59 innocent bystanders in Las Vegas, by a deranged and depraved sociopath, the anti-gun elite in both house of Congress in Washington, D.C. (mostly deluded Democrats, but including too a remnant of RINOs (Republican In Name Only) have already predictably pontificated the parroted term “gun violence.” They love dancing in the blood of the dead murder victims, and thus are exploiting this horror to advance their “class warfare” political agenda.
There is no such thing as “gun violence.” This is a focus-group-driven buzzword and socialist anti-gun cliché talking point to create an imaginary demonic villain as the main anti-Second Amendment propaganda tool. While there exist evil, godless, depraved individuals who perpetrate lawless criminal violence with guns, there are numerous others who perpetrate the same without them. And, since the morally and intellectually dishonest parroted term “gun violence” is a catchword/cliché, the title suggests an unattainable goal.
People have been robbing and killing other people, using the weapons of the day, since the dawn of history, which identifies the real issue: controlling criminal impulses in humans, not the otherwise legal instruments they use to commit crimes. Anyone who doesn’t realize and/or acknowledge this isn’t thinking, and are into a denial syndrome. Our liberty cannot depend upon what anybody “feels.”
Without going on further I endorse reading the online commentary: “The Last Civil Rights Struggle? Discrimination and prejudice are still encouraged, gun owners have taken it long enough,” by Alan Korwin.
James A. Farmer Merrill, Oregon (Klamath County) Long Live The State of Jefferson!
Incidentally, both the Earl Warren and Warren Burger Supreme Courts lack moral credibility and aren’t to be trusted! Same for various career criminal politicians from our nation’s shameful past: Lyndon B. Johnson, Thomas Dodd (D) U.S. Senator of Connecticut, Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Obama, and now Biden! Perhaps the most corrupt and abusive local Democrat Machine was the Daley Machine in Cook County, Illinois. In addition to these treasonous anti-gun elitist politicians is the establishment news media who are nothing more than a mouthpiece and propaganda arm for the depraved Democrats! Our government controlled socialist public schools, colleges, universities, and academia also walk in lockstep with this parroted pontificated Anti-gun Ivory Tower elitism! Fortunately, there exist credible bulwarks against such political deceit, moral and intellectual dishonesty, and Anti-gun propaganda. On The Net:
The Roseburg Beacon at http://www.roseburgbeacon.com. This honest newspaper (unlike most newspaper editors and journalists who remain morally and intellectually dishonest) has been fighting truth decay since 2008. This is news Facebook cannot take down! Also, JPFO, Inc. at http://www.jpfo.org. JPFO, Inc. is “America’s Aggressive Civil Rights Organization” and is non-NRA affiliated. Finally, News With Views at http://www.NewsWithViews.com. Where Reality Shatters Illusion!
I completely agree with Michael.
Guns owners are disrespectful of authority. A failure to rely on authorities is an invariable sign of improper and overly independent attitudes. The mere fact that they gather together to talk about guns at gun shops, gun shows, shooting ranges, and on the internet means that they have some plot going against us normal people. A gun owner has no right to associate with another gun owner.
Therefore, to help ensure our right to happiness and safety we must ban and seize all guns from private hands, and forbid NRA-based criticism towards people who are only trying to help. Searching the homes of all NRA members for any guns and pro-gun literature will go a long way towards reducing crime.
Common sense requires only uniformed soldiers, police, and other agents of the state have access to firearms, and think of all the money we can save by just taking away the guns from private owners and giving them to the military and police. No person should be able to challenge this by writing to Congress or the President. If they do they should be forced in court to admit to it and then fined a hundred million dollars for each time. Subjecting them to torture will probably change their minds.
Making it mandatory that church ministers preach against guns or else they can’t get licensed will certainly encourage the church folk to have the correct belief about guns.
We should hold a nation-wide vote against guns but gun-owners cannot be allowed to participate. They are too biased.
People who don’t like all this prove they are on the side of the killers with the guns and should be put in jail along side all the gangbangers and other gun nuts. Letting them sit in jail for a few years before they are charged will give the government plenty of time to find something wrong in their lives. Anything they say, write, or express should be held against them to prove their guilt.
We should bring all of them here to Chicago to be tried by Mayor Lightbringer as judge, and we should allow only mothers who have lost children to gunfire to be on the juries. Any attorney who tries to defend them should be arrested also. If we don’t get the right verdict the first time we can just keep trying them until we do.
No woman needs to protect herself from rape, assault or murder and should just leave crime prevention to the Police who are properly equipped to investigate following the crime’s completion. Women using a gun in self-defense interferes with and makes the attempted crime a “non-event,” which unnecessarily complicates the Police investigation. Any woman who does this should be put in jail for interfering with an investigation.
If someone still really, really thinks they have a need for a gun in their home for protection then the Army should just force them to host and feed some armed soldiers.
The two percent of the media that don’t support these ideas should just be shut down.
Those who claim that the 2nd amendment was given to us because we might someday need guns to use against an oppressive government forget that our Constitution has strong internal safeguards to protect our freedoms. So there!
Long live our Constitution!
“Long live our Constitution”
Sorry but your thoughts I believe to be wholly inaccurate. 1st our constitution has massive protections for our individual rights including our individual right to keep and bear arms. 2nd and this is mostly important 99% of everything you stated in your belief violates the constitutional protections we have; 99% is only because your piece above as an opinion and as such is protected by the 1st amendment. I suggest you really read the constitution and I mean every amendment, then cross reference that with your statement above.
Constitution protects right of speech, press, etc., separation of church and state meaning state can not direct what church can do or say, right of the individual from illegal search and seizure. I can go on.
I believe; Plainly put your piece above removes the constitution from its existence in its entirety. If this is truly how you wish to live then I could only suggest that you move to some other country like China where the individual has absolutely no rights and immerse your self into that environment for about 10 years to truly learn how they live and are oppressed. Then truly ask yourself if this is right or not.
When the English showed up at Lexington and Concord and demanded that the colonists turn in their arms, ammo and powder and instead they shot those English troops to defend their right to arms, did THEY show an improper and overly independent attitude?
Your authoritarian stripes are showing.
You are saying people’s property should be taken and given to the state and denying people a vote. Think about that. And how ironic that you claim gun owners are biased. Take a look in the mirror.
ok delete your comment and never utter another word. I’m a combat vet and you don’t have the right to use free speech. see how that works. you wouldn’t have your right to spew BS like this if it weren’t for fire arms. violence is violence. it doesnt matter the tool they use. your fears don not over ride my rights
Adolph Hitler stopped a the crime being committed by Jewish people. Obviously understanding the Constitution is difficult for the ignorant.
If guns caused crime the death toll would be in the millions. Death by the millions happen in places and times like NAZI Germany, Moa’ s China and Stalin’s USSR.
But does a single individual need 1 firearm or 10-20? If so, why? Does an individual need thousands and thousands of rounds? If so, why? A common citizen will never be as well armed as a billion dollar funded military no matter how many firearms they purchase so what’s the point there? I am just tired of people saying it’s a God given right. It’s not. It’s written on a piece of paper authored hundreds of years ago. Does it still apply? Do medical journals written then apply now too? I understand the paranoia of government control but could there be a chance that this very same paranoia is fueling a mindset willing into reality the very same outcome trying to be prevented?
Re: “legislate common sense gun laws”
In 1934, 1938, 1968, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2007, 2018 and 2022 I suspect similar arguments were made to “legislate common sense gun laws” when more restrictive federal gun laws were passed. Since all of the regulations derived from these laws are apparently not enough, maybe you can understand the reluctance of gun owners to entertain the idea of sitting quietly and accepting a new barrage. The problem is the real agenda of the people who are leading the charge for more gun control is to ban all guns except for the government and governments (unlike individuals) hold the world record for killing people that don’t agree with them. The reality is implementing expanded background checks or banning semi-automatic rifles (like the AR) or standard capacity magazines has nothing to do with keeping the people safe – it’s about using a horrific crimes like mass shootings to whip lawmakers into an emotional frenzy to goad them into quickly advancing the agenda of gun control irrespective of any facts in more incremental “progressive” steps in order to set a new baseline and move the goal posts to the point where an unscrupulous government would have the option to do what ever they please.
Re: “failing to deal with this important issue”
If you want ” to deal with this important issue” you could start by enforcing the laws already on the books and insist empathetic judges and DAs quit allowing people who use or possess a gun illegally to plea bargain away the illegal firearms offense. The feds are one of the worst offenders when it comes to enforcing laws. Straw purchases and lying on the 4473 form you have to fill out for a background check to purchase a firearm is a felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine – yet in 2010 76142 people failed the background check, 4732 were deemed worthy of prosecution and only 62 were referred for prosecution. Another thing you could do since most of the gun homicides are caused by gangs or repeat offenders is to advocate for a law that would impose a mandatory death sentence on any recidivist with a violent criminal history that uses a firearm to commit a crime regardless of childhood upbringing, economic impoverishment, mental health, age, IQ, ethnicity, $ex or gender identity.
Re: “constant Republican drumbeat that Democrats want to take away all guns”
In 1976 a gentleman by the name of Nelson Shields said the following “The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition – except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors – totally illegal.” Nelson Shields was one of the founders of Handgun Control Inc which is better known under their current “re-branded” name as The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In 1987 another gentleman by the name of Josh Sugarmann said regarding so called assault weapons “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” In a Jan/Feb 1994 interview in Mother Jones Magazine he said, “To end the crisis [gun violence], we have to regulate- or, in the case of handguns and assault weapons, completely ban- the product…. We are far past the where registration, licensing, safety training, background checks, or waiting periods will have much effect on firearms violence.”
In 1988 in response to an NRA comment about criminals always being able to get handguns Sugarmann also said “The NRA is Right: But We Still Need to Ban Handguns”. On 11/4/99 he said in a NYT interview “A gun-control movement worthy of the name would insist that President Clinton move beyond his proposals for controls — such as expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines — and immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island. Their measure would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns. Real gun control will take courage. In the long run, half-measures and compromises only sacrifice lives.” Josh Sugarmann is currently the head and founder of the Violence policy Center and was one of the founders of The Coalition to Ban Handguns which is better known under their current “re-branded” name as The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. While the names and tactics of these organizations may have changed, the goals and a lot of the personnel remain the same.
Re: ” As a result, 20 million assault weapons are now in the hands of American gun owners”
And if they were a problem you would know it because there would be a lot more than 15-20000 illegal firearm homicides each year
Re: “There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today a civilian should be carrying a loaded weapon”
For context, that quote was in response to members of the Black Panther party carrying loaded firearms outside and inside the statehouse in Sacramento. It’s not clear it was meant to apply to the population as a whole
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reagan-loaded-guns-quote/
Re Mr Fortis’ comments about the credibility of Chief Justice Warren Burger’s statement on the Second Amendment being a fraud perpetrated on the American people, herewith is a YouTube video of him making this claim. Today with AI-altered videos, one might question it, but not in 1991 when it was recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ7ma-TW4U4
Re Reagan’s comment about lock-and-loaded, pistol-packing citizens, it indeed was made during the Black Power period inspired by armed Blacks. But what does Mr. Fortis suggest, that the comment was aimed only at Black Americans and not at the population at large, in which case Reagan would have said, “There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today Black Americans should be carrying loaded weapons.” I don’t think so.
Re Mr. Smith’s voluminous comments, they are consistent with tired, old conservative arguments about the intent behind the Second Amendment. Truth be told, even constitutional historians struggle with that question. But it makes sense that the Founders couldn’t very well take muskets away from those living on the frontier where skirmishes with native Americans were ongoing. As to the militia point, at the writing of the Constitution, the states were all powerful at the expense of a strong federal government, thus the need for their own militias.
All of that said, the Constitution failed to mention women’s rights and slavery, among other rights, so carving out the reasons for the Second Amendment as they pertain to modern society is a bit disingenuous. Women had to fight for their rights as did Black slaves. Likewise those of us who believe in gun control have to wage that same kind of fight. I can imagine the Mr. Smith’s of the world opposing women’s suffrage in the mid-nineteenth century, because it was not addressed in the Constitution.
As to the exact number of mass shootings, what is Mr. Smith’s point? Does it matter to those parents of children killed in school shootings if they are victims of the 100th or 200th school shooting? Mr. Smith fails to make the critical point that, while school shootings account for relatively few deaths in the larger picture of gun violence in the country, the fear it generates among school age children and their parents is incalculable. It tears at the very fabric of our society.
My conservative friends often use the automobile analogy to counter gun control, i.e. over 50,000 Americans are killed each year in car crashes, but we don’t advocate getting rid of cars. Hogwash. First, rational gun control advocates don’t suggest getting rid of all guns. As was the case with cars, they advocate the same kinds of reasonable controls that have made cars safer: seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes, numerous traffic rules, etc. Without those types of safety features thousands more Americans would die in car crashes each year. So the answer is not elimination, it is regulation. Mr. Smith is also disingenuous when he states, “the problem is the real agenda of the people who are leading the charge for more gun control is to ban all guns.” There are certainly those who would do so, but they are not the mainstream gun control advocates. But standard fare for conservatives is to demonize the whole movement based on a few radicals.
Mr. Farmer’s statement that elitists “love dancing in the blood of the dead murder victims, and thus are exploiting this horror to advance their “class warfare” political agenda” is but one of many examples of the kind of paranoia that is rife in the MAGA wing of the Republican Party these days. It needs to stop.
As to Mr. Smith’s attempt to speak for all gun owners, he is oversimplifying the issue. Many gun owners understand that something has to be done to get the gun violence problem under control. Full disclosure, I grew up a hunter in Maine and like a lot of hunters, saw hunting as a way to put food on the table; I was a marksman in the US Army; and I keep a pistol at my camp in Maine under lock and key, with no bullet in the chamber or a clip in the handle. If more gun owners followed those simple rules, you wouldn’t see kid shootings such as the most recent one in Georgia where a three-year old child got his hands on his father’s gun and shot two of his family members.
In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence, and in my own defense, I point out that I have only suggested that Congress revisit the Second Amendment as it has at numerous other times in our country’s history to amend the Constitution, based on the needs of contemporary society. If this were to come to pass, I believe one of the discussions would be about the psychological profiles of many of the deranged shooters who use military-style assault rifles to commit their crimes. Many of them lack self esteem and feel shunned by society and turn to violence as a means of reasserting their power. An AR-15 fits exactly into that power profile through its appearance alone. Military-style assault rifles have to go.
Removing the 2nd Amendment wouldn’t actually remove the right. The right is pre-existing. All rights pre-existed the Bill of Rights, and if you note the 2nd Amendment does speak of the right as though it already existed.
All that would change is that if the 2nd Amendment were repealed the government could legally infringe the right, but legally allowing the government to infringe our rights is a horrible idea.
I have a solution for violence. Lock the violent people up. Virtually every murder in my state ends with the reporter saying and the suspect has a long history of violent crime. We need to stop letting violent people out of prison. When they are again violent, the state politicians start screaming for more gun controls. They never say we need to start keeping the violent people in prison. They are punishing those of us who are never violent while refusing to punish those who are.
Haha. Instead of punishing people responsible for car accidents, and those drivers (exercising a privilege btw and not a right) who willfully break laws, you say “reasonable controls”, how about stricter punishments for people who cause accidents and those who willfully break those laws? How about personal responsibility? What if I were to say that your opinion piece contains “assault words” and reasonable controls need to be enacted by removing your writing instrument, access to the internet, and certain words from your vocabulary? Grow up and realize that guns are not the issue. People are. Until the government stops leaving billions of dollars of actual war equipment, vehicles, and weapons to known terrorists (and abandoning US citizens and their allies to be murdered by those terrorists), stops trading notorious arms dealers for a pothead WNBA player (who broke a law that landed her in jail btw), sending billions of dollars to aid in a foreign war that they helped instigate by encroaching with NATO on Russian borders, closes the borders to America, and instead starts using that money to better all aspects of life for American citizens, crime will continue. Stop your nonsense and attempts to infringe on our rights because of your fear, or complete ineptitude, of addressing the real issues.
Re: But it makes sense that the Founders couldn’t very well take muskets away from those living on the frontier”
The “founders” didn’t place any restrictions on the types of “arms” the “people” could own. And there were harbingers of modern firearms in the 1700’s – to name a few; the 1718 Puckle gun, the 1757 Ferguson Rifle, and the 1781 Giordani Rifle.that was carried by the Lewis and Clarke expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson who was very familiar with the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights
Re: “As to the militia point…the states were all powerful at the expense of a strong federal government, thus the need for their own militia’
Actually the “people” “were all powerful” because militias were loosely organized by the “people” and there were no restrictions on the weapons law abiding private citizens could own.
Re: “Likewise those of us who believe in gun control have to wage that same kind of fight”
Fine. Get 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the states to modify or repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Re: “I can imagine the Mr. Smith’s of the world opposing women’s suffrage in the mid-nineteenth century”
This is comparing apples to oranges but “Imagination” can be a respite from reality
Re: ” tired, old conservative arguments about the intent behind the Second Amendment”
Really. When the Bill of Rights Preamble says the purpose of the Amendments (including the 2nd) is to deter or “prevent misconstruction of its (i.e. the government’s) powers” and the 2nd Amendment says the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” what do you think the “intent” is?
Re: “As to the exact number of mass shootings, what is Mr. Smith’s point?”
The “point” is depending on your definition of “mass shootings” many involve criminals fighting other criminals and not unsuspecting, innocent civilians but the news media and anti-gun folks immediately spin them to try to convince the population at large they are frequent, widespread and a threat their personal safety.
Re: “Does it matter to those parents of children killed in school shootings if they are victims of the 100th or 200th school shooting?”
No
Re: “the larger picture of gun violence in the country”
According to the CDC, in 2019 there were 38355 deaths from firearms and most were suicides while 14414 were homicides. If someone wants to ki11 themselves it’s a matter of individual choice where the person can pick the time, place and method and an argument can also be made that an individual’s life belongs to them exclusively and not you, the State or anyone else. In addition, suicide is not illegal at the federal level or in any state I can find and some states allow assisted suicide. Note also that the number of suicides committed with firearms (23941) was about equal to the number committed by other means (23570) so as long as there are other options, it’s not clear that restricting firearms would have any effect on the number of suicides.
Homicides are a different story. 14414 people murdered with firearms in the US works out to about 39 people per day. These are the “word doctored” figures the news media and anti-gun folks like to publicize because people relate to the magnitude of those numbers and it sounds like a lot of people until you realize this is out of a population of 330 million Americans. In that context, it works out to about 1 person out of every 23,000 people being murdered with a firearm. Dwell on the magnitude of your individual significance next time you are in a stadium with 23,000 people and you will realize these events are rare. It is also estimated there are 109 million gun owners in the US which means on any given day 108,999,961 gun owners didn’t ki11 anyone yet because the news media magnifies these relatively isolated and infrequent events to the level of an epidemic, the anti-gun folks answer is to take the guns away from people who harmed no one The number of firearm homicides will never be zero – so if you think 1 person out of 23,000 is unacceptable then given the fact that deranged individuals and murderers are an intrinsic part of the human race and we currently live in a free society, what number of illegal firearm homicides would ever be acceptable to you to the point you would say “we don’t need any more restrictions on the private ownership of firearms”?
Re: “the fear it generates among school age children and their parents is incalculable”
Not surprising since with a US population of ~330 million people they are rare and the news media and anti-gun folks hype them to the point people believe they are commonplace. But it is noted these current problems with school shootings didn’t seem to exist in the 50’s and 60’s when firearms were less regulated and more prolific – so what changed? One change was prior to the late 1960’s parents, and to a lesser extent teachers, were free to discipline their kids pretty much any way they wanted. It was not unusual for the school assistant principal to spank misbehaving kids with a paddle or have disruptive kids openly embarrassed and reprimanded in class or have them stand in a corner by themselves in the classroom or in a hallway facing a wall in view of their peers. On the home front, punishments, which could be more severe, lead to the rise of interventions by social services. Once kids realized they could bring the wrath of the government down upon anyone (parents or school) who disciplined them, efforts to punish bad behavior degenerated into cajoling and kids acknowledgement of and respect for authority vanished. Positive reinforcement over the years has now allowed this situation to morph into where even differences of opinion are considered excessive punishments to the point kids demand (and get) “safe spaces”. I don’t pretend to know if this is the only cause of today’s problems – but it does address the heart of the problem, which is lack of tolerance and respect for other people and authority.
Another change was JFK’s Community Mental Health Act of 1963 that set up government grants for community mental health facilities across the US that encouraged the treatment of mental health patients outside of institutions, which led to the closure of several expensive, state run mental health institutions. A final blow was the ACLU”s effective lawsuit against mental health hospitals in 1972 that mandated expensive reforms that eventually forced several to close down. Maybe the reforms were justified but the end result was an increased reliance on psychotropic drugs to be self medicated by potential patients who were turned loose on the streets
Note also that the worst mass killing in a US school occurred on May 18, 1927 in the Bath schoolhouse in Michigan where the killer used dynamite. And rather than immediately rush in an emotional tizzy to pass new laws to restrict the sale of dynamite, cooler heads prevailed and it took 43 years until October 15, 1970 when the law was changed. Up until that date anyone over 21 could walk into a hardware store or farm coop and buy dynamite and blasting caps
Re: “It tears at the very fabric of our society”
If you want to see a “tear” in the fabric of society wait until you try to confiscate guns from 109 million legal gun owners or 20 million owners of so-called “assault rifles” that have harmed no one. The last time a government in the US tried that with US citizens was April 19, 1775 in Concord MA and it started the revolutionary war
Re: “First, rational gun control advocates don’t suggest getting rid of all guns”
As I pointed out “rational gun control advocates” realized in the 1970’s after pushback from “the people” that proposal was a non starter after the anti-gun folks openly admitted that was their goal so now they have the same goal, but have taken a silent, slower, more “progressive” approach which is more subtle, insidious, & incremental than immediate confiscation. You can see examples of the philosophy in laws that have been implemented by like minded individuals at the state level where they don’t confiscate firearms or magazines, they just pass laws that say you can’t keep, sell, transfer, share, get them repaired, purchase ammunition, inherit, or shoot them. The Colorado magazine ban is a good example where the “owner” can keep them but not share or transfer them to anyone he is living with like his/her children, spouse, roommates, significant others, domestic partners, house guests, employees, or other acquaintances you have known for years. Other examples are the CA SKS Sporter ban in 2000 & 1982 San Francisco pistol ban which required owners to dispose of any banned firearms they owned (there was no grandfathering). Other states (NY,NJ,CA,MA,MD,CT) have banned certain types of so called “assault rifles” but grandfathered those currently owned if the owners registered them. However the owner cannot sell or transfer them to anyone within the state or let their kids inherit them – the only options are to surrender them to the police, take them out of state or sell them to a licensed dealer. These states also prohibit anyone moving into the state from bringing & registering any of the “banned” firearms so they have in effect “confiscated” them by forcing them to dispose of them.
So in a disingenuous sense you are correct – the police didn’t show up at your door to take your guns or magazines away – at least not yet – they just make it onerous, legally hazardous, & nearly impossible to own them which is the way the anti-gun folks implement their incremental strategy that will allow them to smugly claim ” rational gun control advocates don’t suggest getting rid of all guns”.
Re: “As was the case with cars, they advocate the same kinds of reasonable controls that have made cars safer”
The difference is guns are designed to be inherently dangerous and cars are not. There are 4 basic rules of gun safety and if everyone followed them there would be no firearm accidents. However since firearms are designed to be dangerous and even kill there is little that can be done to make them safe for from someone that intends to use them – especially illegally.
Re: “So the answer is not elimination, it is regulation ”
The problem you have is that in 2016 (for example) there were 667300 violent criminals in state prisons and 20900 in federal prisons. This works out to a total of 688200 or about 0.214% of the US population which means that about 1 out of every 466 people in the US that have been caught have no qualms about ignoring whatever laws you pass and killing or injuring someone and the gun is often their tool of choice. So the bottom line is (1) The human race in the US produces a few bad individuals prone to violence who just refuse to play by whatever rules you promulgate and until you find some way to identify these individuals and the courage to permanently eliminate them from society, innocent people are going to be killed (2) Because of these bad individuals, bad things happen every day to people who through no fault of their own were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Criminals will always have guns if they want them. If worst comes to worst they will be smuggled into the US from Mexico inside a bale of marijuana or shipment of fentanyl and sold on the black market.
Re: “There are certainly those who would do so, but they are not the mainstream gun control advocates… standard fare for conservatives is to demonize the whole movement based on a few radicals”
I’ve had dealings with the “mainstream gun control advocates” when testifying at our capitol against new gun laws and I have never seen a new, restrictive gun law they have opposed. So yes, because the “few radicals” are the ones writing the legislation
Re: “Many gun owners understand that something has to be done to get the gun violence problem under control”
Okay, like what?
Re: “If more gun owners followed those simple rules, you wouldn’t see kid shootings”
That’s true. But history has shown you can’t legislate personal responsibility
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #1”
Not true. One solution is to enforce the laws on the books and remove most of the people causing the problems. Specifically, here is my post again … “You could start by enforcing the laws already on the books and insist empathetic judges and DAs quit allowing people who use or possess a gun illegally to plea bargain away the illegal firearms offense. The feds are one of the worst offenders when it comes to enforcing laws. Straw purchases and lying on the 4473 form you have to fill out for a background check to purchase a firearm is a felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine – yet in 2010 76142 people failed the background check, 4732 were deemed worthy of prosecution and only 62 were referred for prosecution. Another thing you could do since most of the gun homicides are caused by gangs or repeat offenders is to advocate for a law that would impose a mandatory death sentence on any recidivist with a violent criminal history that uses a firearm to commit a crime regardless of childhood upbringing, economic impoverishment, mental health, age, IQ, ethnicity, sex or gender identity”
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #2”
Currently, there are only 2 ways to legally sell a gun in the US to a private citizen. One is a private sale between individuals (typically like between family and friends) or by a gun dealer licensed with a Federal Firearms License (FFL) from the federal BATF. Only individuals with an FFL can run a background check through the government NICS database of prohibited persons. Private citizens cannot. Note that a person can purchase a firearm online, but the physical transfer of the firearm still must go through an FFL at the seller or an FFL local to the buyer. So anyone wanting to improve the process should encourage the federal government to give anyone free, public, anonymous online access to the NICS database. The NICS database is really a go/no go process and no useful information has to be displayed to facilitate phishing expeditions for identity theft other than what was already known by the user making the query. It’s certainly no more revealing than the national $ex offender registry or the FAA’s pilot and mechanic license query system where the latter provides more detailed information on presumably law-abiding citizens. Once this system is implemented, you then tell private sellers if you sell or transfer a firearm to anyone and don’t retain evidence that says you did a favorable NICS check on the buyer or transferee, you could be held liable if they commit a gun-related crime. This would effectively close the so-called private sale loophole and still preserve the anonymity of the parties involved the same way the current background check system does now. If a private sale firearm shows up at a crime scene, the BATF follows their current procedure of using the serial number of the firearm to contact the manufacturer and ultimately the last FFL that sold the firearm to a private citizen to obtain that citizen’s contact information from the ATF form 4473 the FFL is required to keep on file. That citizen is then contacted and produces the evidence from the NICS background check that identifies the second private citizen who is then contacted, and so forth.
The real benefit of this proposal is how it can help identify the illusive killer with questionable behavior patterns or mental health issues that is causing so many problems. As it stands now there is no easy, fast, non-bureaucratic method for someone to determine if a suspicious person (client, neighbor, employee, potential date, student, etc) is a potential threat to society. If someone thinks an individual could be a threat, a query to a public NICS database would at least tell him or her in a few seconds if the individual could obtain a firearm. Then, armed with that information the appropriate authorities could be notified and they could decide if it was erroneous information or whether to investigate further. As it stands now, if you tell authorities you know a suspicious person they will probably ignore you, but if you tell them you know such a person and – by the way – according to the NICS database he can buy a firearm, they may be more inclined to investigate rather than risk embarrassment later if the worst happens. The same would be true if you see a suspicious acquaintance with a firearm when the NICS query says he’s prohibited from having one. It would also help provide piece of mind and a method for victims of violent crimes to ensure their assailants either on parole or still at large have not been excluded from the database because of some bureaucratic foul-up.
Other specific public safety issues where it would be useful are:
>Allow potential victims to vet known stalkers or acquaintances under a restraining order
>Allow gun clubs to vet potential members
>Allow shooting ranges to vet suspicious customers
>Allow proprietors of “build your own firearm” gun shops to vet customers
>Help prevent straw purchases by allowing FFL’s to vet all individuals involved with the purchase of a firearm as a gift
>Allow mental health workers to vet troubled individuals like the Aurora Colorado theater killer
>Allow resource officers and school officials to vet suspicious students like the Arapahoe High School killer in Colorado
>Allow the family of the mentally troubled Lafayette, LA killer to verify he couldn’t purchase a firearm
>Allow neighbors of the Odessa, TX shooter to notify police he was shooting a gun near his house when the NICS system said he couldn’t have a gun
>Allow police officers to vet anyone they contact – (note the routine background checks performed by police often do not include information about firearms eligibility because they don’t directly access the NICS database
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #3”
There is currently a big push for red flag laws that deny a gun owner due process when the laws aren’t necessary. All states have laws, similar to Florida’s Baker Act, that allow the police or mental health authorities to evaluate anyone and confine them to a mental health facility away from their firearms for 72 hours without any due process if they believe the individual is a danger to themselves or others. After 72 hours, the individual is either released if they are no longer considered to be a danger to themselves or others or they are offered the choice of remaining in the facility either voluntarily or under a court order if a judge agrees to issue one. No sane gun owner is going to choose the court order option because it will automatically adjudicate the individual as being mentally defective and under current US law (see BATF form 4473 question 11f) that will disqualify the individual from possessing any firearms now or in the future.
So why don’t these laws work? The problem is in most cases the mental health facility will not accept a person unless they are medically cleared – especially if drugs or alcohol are involved. This typically requires the individual to be taken first to a hospital emergency room (ER) for a stay that can last hours or even days – and because ER facilities are not lockdown facilities and no one funds a 24/7 guard to watch them, they often slip out of the ER unnoticed.
Current law allows the US government to require all hospitals that accept Medicare to treat anyone regardless of immigration status or ability to pay so if the federal government wants to fix something, they should use the same legal arguments to require all hospitals that accept Medicare to provide at least one ER examining room that can be locked down to securely detain any person who is on a mental health hold until they can be transferred to a mental health facility for evaluation
It is also noted these laws are partially about “danger to self” and according to the CDC in 2016, 22018 people killed themselves with firearms and 22175 did it by other means and the proposed red flag laws that only confiscate firearms would not prevent an individual from employing “other means” – but confinement to a mental health facility would.
Re: “to amend the Constitution, based on the needs of contemporary society”
And what “contemporary society needs” would you suggest?
Re: “one of the discussions would be about the psychological profiles of many of the deranged shooters”
There are 2 problems with this. First, mental health issues aren’t necessarily present at the time of an evaluation and lots of mentally ill people “present well” – i.e. they are good at hiding their true personality unless it is inadvertently revealed in a psychotic break or crisis situation. The second problem is there are no objective criteria for a mental health evaluation. As is evidenced in court trials, you often have “experts” who disagree and reach completely different conclusions. When this ambiguity is married to regulations written by unaccountable bureaucrats and used by people who are trying to ban all guns from private citizens it would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for a law abiding citizen to own a firearm
Re: “An AR-15 fits exactly into that power profile through its appearance alone”
Even if all the guns could be banned, there are plenty of other methods available to murder a lot of people thanks to the internet – i.e things like pipe bombs (San Bernardino), pressure cooker bombs (Boston), propane tank bombs (Columbine High School), truck bombs (Oklahoma City), exotic battery bombs (Austin, TX), Molotov cocktails (Arapahoe High School), gasoline cans and a match (Happy Land fire on 3/25/90), heavy truck or SUV crashing in to a crowd of people (Nice, France and Waukesha, WI), RV bombs (Nashville, TN) home made flame throwers made from plumbing parts and gasoline (nowhere – yet) and any pressure vessel filled with shrapnel and gun powder manufactured the same way it has been since the 6th century that will momentarily confine an explosive pressure wave. And when any of those things are used and there are no civilian firearms to deter the government from limiting our Bill of Rights, it’s likely no one will know about them because at that point in order to silence any criticism for actions they can’t control and to maintain civilian support and power, the government has no reason to allow them to be reported. In other words, banning “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines just starts us down the road of incessant, progressive bans on other firearms with the end result being that only criminals and the government will have guns
It is also noted that several mass shootings are committed with handguns but the anti-gun folks focus is on eliminating the less prolific, low hanging fruit first – i.e. so called “assault rifles”. Google Fort Hood shooter if you want a perspective the media and anti-gun folks don’t extensively report on
Re: “Military-style assault rifles have to go”
You can’t blame today’s problem of mass murders on so called “assault weapons”. The first semi-automatic handgun was invented in the late 1800’s and the most popular version went into production in 1911. It is also noted the so-called evil “assault rifles” with standard capacity 30 round magazines are not new technology. The original version was invented by the Germans near the end of WWII and the current versions were invented in the late 1940’s and have always been available to the public (note the “47” in AK-47 stands for 1947, the year the firearm went into production). As a matter of fact fully automatic versions (i.e. machine guns), which are true military grade rifles, were readily available to the general public until 1986 and background checks on firearm transfers weren’t required until 1994 – yet nobody talks about mass shootings with any version (semi-automatic or automatic) of these guns during the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s so it’s a relatively new phenomenon and logic would indicate it’s being caused by something else.
Mr. Weymouth – Here is my rebuttal to your comments. I originally submitted it as separate posts for you to easily respond to them individually but the moderators didn’t post them. So I’ll try it again as one huge, long post
Re: ” tired, old conservative arguments about the intent behind the Second Amendment”
Really. When the Bill of Rights Preamble says the purpose of the Amendments (including the 2nd) is to deter or “prevent misconstruction of its (i.e. the government’s) powers” and the 2nd Amendment says the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” what do you think the “intent” is?
Re: But it makes sense that the Founders couldn’t very well take muskets away from those living on the frontier”
The “founders” didn’t place any restrictions on the types of “arms” the “people” could own. And there were harbingers of modern firearms in the 1700’s – to name a few; the 1718 Puckle gun, the 1757 Ferguson Rifle, and the 1781 Giordani Rifle.that was carried by the Lewis and Clarke expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson who was very familiar with the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights
Re: “As to the militia point…the states were all powerful at the expense of a strong federal government, thus the need for their own militia’
Actually the “people” “were all powerful” because militias were loosely organized by the “people” and there were no restrictions on the weapons law abiding private citizens could own.
Re: “Likewise those of us who believe in gun control have to wage that same kind of fight”
Fine. Get 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the states to modify or repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Re: “I can imagine the Mr. Smith’s of the world opposing women’s suffrage in the mid-nineteenth century”
This is comparing apples to oranges but “Imagination” can be a respite from reality
Re: “As to the exact number of mass shootings, what is Mr. Smith’s point?”
The “point” is depending on your definition of “mass shootings” many involve criminals fighting other criminals and not unsuspecting, innocent civilians but the news media and anti-gun folks immediately spin them to try to convince the population at large they are frequent, widespread and a threat their personal safety.
Re: “Does it matter to those parents of children killed in school shootings if they are victims of the 100th or 200th school shooting?”
No
Re: “the larger picture of gun violence in the country”
According to the CDC, in 2019 there were 38355 deaths from firearms and most were suicides while 14414 were homicides. If someone wants to ki11 themselves it’s a matter of individual choice where the person can pick the time, place and method and an argument can also be made that an individual’s life belongs to them exclusively and not you, the State or anyone else. In addition, suicide is not illegal at the federal level or in any state I can find and some states allow assisted suicide. Note also that the number of suicides committed with firearms (23941) was about equal to the number committed by other means (23570) so as long as there are other options, it’s not clear that restricting firearms would have any effect on the number of suicides.
Homicides are a different story. 14414 people murdered with firearms in the US works out to about 39 people per day. These are the “word doctored” figures the news media and anti-gun folks like to publicize because people relate to the magnitude of those numbers and it sounds like a lot of people until you realize this is out of a population of 330 million Americans. In that context, it works out to about 1 person out of every 23,000 people being murdered with a firearm. Dwell on the magnitude of your individual significance next time you are in a stadium with 23,000 people and you will realize these events are rare. It is also estimated there are 109 million gun owners in the US which means on any given day 108,999,961 gun owners didn’t ki11 anyone yet because the news media magnifies these relatively isolated and infrequent events to the level of an epidemic, the anti-gun folks answer is to take the guns away from people who harmed no one The number of firearm homicides will never be zero – so if you think 1 person out of 23,000 is unacceptable then given the fact that deranged individuals and murderers are an intrinsic part of the human race and we currently live in a free society, what number of illegal firearm homicides would ever be acceptable to you to the point you would say “we don’t need any more restrictions on the private ownership of firearms”?
Re: “the fear it generates among school age children and their parents is incalculable”
Not surprising since with a US population of ~330 million people they are rare and the news media and anti-gun folks hype them to the point people believe they are commonplace. But it is noted these current problems with school shootings didn’t seem to exist in the 50’s and 60’s when firearms were less regulated and more prolific – so what changed? One change was prior to the late 1960’s parents, and to a lesser extent teachers, were free to discipline their kids pretty much any way they wanted. It was not unusual for the school assistant principal to spank misbehaving kids with a paddle or have disruptive kids openly embarrassed and reprimanded in class or have them stand in a corner by themselves in the classroom or in a hallway facing a wall in view of their peers. On the home front, punishments, which could be more severe, lead to the rise of interventions by social services. Once kids realized they could bring the wrath of the government down upon anyone (parents or school) who disciplined them, efforts to punish bad behavior degenerated into cajoling and kids acknowledgement of and respect for authority vanished. Positive reinforcement over the years has now allowed this situation to morph into where even differences of opinion are considered excessive punishments to the point kids demand (and get) “safe spaces”. I don’t pretend to know if this is the only cause of today’s problems – but it does address the heart of the problem, which is lack of tolerance and respect for other people and authority.
Another change was JFK’s Community Mental Health Act of 1963 that set up government grants for community mental health facilities across the US that encouraged the treatment of mental health patients outside of institutions, which led to the closure of several expensive, state run mental health institutions. A final blow was the ACLU”s effective lawsuit against mental health hospitals in 1972 that mandated expensive reforms that eventually forced several to close down. Maybe the reforms were justified but the end result was an increased reliance on psychotropic drugs to be self medicated by potential patients who were turned loose on the streets
Note also that the worst mass killing in a US school occurred on May 18, 1927 in the Bath schoolhouse in Michigan where the killer used dynamite. And rather than immediately rush in an emotional tizzy to pass new laws to restrict the sale of dynamite, cooler heads prevailed and it took 43 years until October 15, 1970 when the law was changed. Up until that date anyone over 21 could walk into a hardware store or farm coop and buy dynamite and blasting caps
Re: “It tears at the very fabric of our society”
If you want to see a “tear” in the fabric of society wait until you try to confiscate guns from 109 million legal gun owners or 20 million owners of so-called “assault rifles” that have harmed no one. The last time a government in the US tried that with US citizens was April 19, 1775 in Concord MA and it started the revolutionary war
Re: “First, rational gun control advocates don’t suggest getting rid of all guns”
As I pointed out “rational gun control advocates” realized in the 1970’s after pushback from “the people” that proposal was a non starter after the anti-gun folks openly admitted that was their goal so now they have the same goal, but have taken a silent, slower, more “progressive” approach which is more subtle, insidious, & incremental than immediate confiscation. You can see examples of the philosophy in laws that have been implemented by like minded individuals at the state level where they don’t confiscate firearms or magazines, they just pass laws that say you can’t keep, sell, transfer, share, get them repaired, purchase ammunition, inherit, or shoot them. The Colorado magazine ban is a good example where the “owner” can keep them but not share or transfer them to anyone he is living with like his/her children, spouse, roommates, significant others, domestic partners, house guests, employees, or other acquaintances you have known for years. Other examples are the CA SKS Sporter ban in 2000 & 1982 San Francisco pistol ban which required owners to dispose of any banned firearms they owned (there was no grandfathering). Other states (NY,NJ,CA,MA,MD,CT) have banned certain types of so called “assault rifles” but grandfathered those currently owned if the owners registered them. However the owner cannot sell or transfer them to anyone within the state or let their kids inherit them – the only options are to surrender them to the police, take them out of state or sell them to a licensed dealer. These states also prohibit anyone moving into the state from bringing & registering any of the “banned” firearms so they have in effect “confiscated” them by forcing them to dispose of them.
So in a disingenuous sense you are correct – the police didn’t show up at your door to take your guns or magazines away – at least not yet – they just make it onerous, legally hazardous, & nearly impossible to own them which is the way the anti-gun folks implement their incremental strategy that will allow them to smugly claim ” rational gun control advocates don’t suggest getting rid of all guns”.
Re: “As was the case with cars, they advocate the same kinds of reasonable controls that have made cars safer”
The difference is guns are designed to be inherently dangerous and cars are not. There are 4 basic rules of gun safety and if everyone followed them there would be no firearm accidents. However since firearms are designed to be dangerous and even kill there is little that can be done to make them safe for from someone that intends to use them – especially illegally.
Re: “So the answer is not elimination, it is regulation ”
The problem you have is that in 2016 (for example) there were 667300 violent criminals in state prisons and 20900 in federal prisons. This works out to a total of 688200 or about 0.214% of the US population which means that about 1 out of every 466 people in the US that have been caught have no qualms about ignoring whatever laws you pass and killing or injuring someone and the gun is often their tool of choice. So the bottom line is (1) The human race in the US produces a few bad individuals prone to violence who just refuse to play by whatever rules you promulgate and until you find some way to identify these individuals and the courage to permanently eliminate them from society, innocent people are going to be killed (2) Because of these bad individuals, bad things happen every day to people who through no fault of their own were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Criminals will always have guns if they want them. If worst comes to worst they will be smuggled into the US from Mexico inside a bale of marijuana or shipment of fentanyl and sold on the black market.
Re: “There are certainly those who would do so, but they are not the mainstream gun control advocates… standard fare for conservatives is to demonize the whole movement based on a few radicals”
I’ve had dealings with the “mainstream gun control advocates” when testifying at our capitol against new gun laws and I have never seen a new, restrictive gun law they have opposed. So yes, because the “few radicals” are the ones writing the legislation
Re: “Many gun owners understand that something has to be done to get the gun violence problem under control”
Okay, like what?
Re: “If more gun owners followed those simple rules, you wouldn’t see kid shootings”
That’s true. But history has shown you can’t legislate personal responsibility
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #1”
Not true. One solution is to enforce the laws on the books and remove most of the people causing the problems. Specifically, here is my post again … “You could start by enforcing the laws already on the books and insist empathetic judges and DAs quit allowing people who use or possess a gun illegally to plea bargain away the illegal firearms offense. The feds are one of the worst offenders when it comes to enforcing laws. Straw purchases and lying on the 4473 form you have to fill out for a background check to purchase a firearm is a felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine – yet in 2010 76142 people failed the background check, 4732 were deemed worthy of prosecution and only 62 were referred for prosecution. Another thing you could do since most of the gun homicides are caused by gangs or repeat offenders is to advocate for a law that would impose a mandatory death sentence on any recidivist with a violent criminal history that uses a firearm to commit a crime regardless of childhood upbringing, economic impoverishment, mental health, age, IQ, ethnicity, sex or gender identity”
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #2”
Currently, there are only 2 ways to legally sell a gun in the US to a private citizen. One is a private sale between individuals (typically like between family and friends) or by a gun dealer licensed with a Federal Firearms License (FFL) from the federal BATF. Only individuals with an FFL can run a background check through the government NICS database of prohibited persons. Private citizens cannot. Note that a person can purchase a firearm online, but the physical transfer of the firearm still must go through an FFL at the seller or an FFL local to the buyer. So anyone wanting to improve the process should encourage the federal government to give anyone free, public, anonymous online access to the NICS database. The NICS database is really a go/no go process and no useful information has to be displayed to facilitate phishing expeditions for identity theft other than what was already known by the user making the query. It’s certainly no more revealing than the national $ex offender registry or the FAA’s pilot and mechanic license query system where the latter provides more detailed information on presumably law-abiding citizens. Once this system is implemented, you then tell private sellers if you sell or transfer a firearm to anyone and don’t retain evidence that says you did a favorable NICS check on the buyer or transferee, you could be held liable if they commit a gun-related crime. This would effectively close the so-called private sale loophole and still preserve the anonymity of the parties involved the same way the current background check system does now. If a private sale firearm shows up at a crime scene, the BATF follows their current procedure of using the serial number of the firearm to contact the manufacturer and ultimately the last FFL that sold the firearm to a private citizen to obtain that citizen’s contact information from the ATF form 4473 the FFL is required to keep on file. That citizen is then contacted and produces the evidence from the NICS background check that identifies the second private citizen who is then contacted, and so forth.
The real benefit of this proposal is how it can help identify the illusive killer with questionable behavior patterns or mental health issues that is causing so many problems. As it stands now there is no easy, fast, non-bureaucratic method for someone to determine if a suspicious person (client, neighbor, employee, potential date, student, etc) is a potential threat to society. If someone thinks an individual could be a threat, a query to a public NICS database would at least tell him or her in a few seconds if the individual could obtain a firearm. Then, armed with that information the appropriate authorities could be notified and they could decide if it was erroneous information or whether to investigate further. As it stands now, if you tell authorities you know a suspicious person they will probably ignore you, but if you tell them you know such a person and – by the way – according to the NICS database he can buy a firearm, they may be more inclined to investigate rather than risk embarrassment later if the worst happens. The same would be true if you see a suspicious acquaintance with a firearm when the NICS query says he’s prohibited from having one. It would also help provide piece of mind and a method for victims of violent crimes to ensure their assailants either on parole or still at large have not been excluded from the database because of some bureaucratic foul-up.
Other specific public safety issues where it would be useful are:
>Allow potential victims to vet known stalkers or acquaintances under a restraining order
>Allow gun clubs to vet potential members
>Allow shooting ranges to vet suspicious customers
>Allow proprietors of “build your own firearm” gun shops to vet customers
>Help prevent straw purchases by allowing FFL’s to vet all individuals involved with the purchase of a firearm as a gift
>Allow mental health workers to vet troubled individuals like the Aurora Colorado theater killer
>Allow resource officers and school officials to vet suspicious students like the Arapahoe High School killer in Colorado
>Allow the family of the mentally troubled Lafayette, LA killer to verify he couldn’t purchase a firearm
>Allow neighbors of the Odessa, TX shooter to notify police he was shooting a gun near his house when the NICS system said he couldn’t have a gun
>Allow police officers to vet anyone they contact – (note the routine background checks performed by police often do not include information about firearms eligibility because they don’t directly access the NICS database
Re: “In all the return fire aimed at my commentary, not one of the detractors even came close to constructive solutions to our nation’s gun violence – suggestion #3”
There is currently a big push for red flag laws that deny a gun owner due process when the laws aren’t necessary. All states have laws, similar to Florida’s Baker Act, that allow the police or mental health authorities to evaluate anyone and confine them to a mental health facility away from their firearms for 72 hours without any due process if they believe the individual is a danger to themselves or others. After 72 hours, the individual is either released if they are no longer considered to be a danger to themselves or others or they are offered the choice of remaining in the facility either voluntarily or under a court order if a judge agrees to issue one. No sane gun owner is going to choose the court order option because it will automatically adjudicate the individual as being mentally defective and under current US law (see BATF form 4473 question 11f) that will disqualify the individual from possessing any firearms now or in the future.
So why don’t these laws work? The problem is in most cases the mental health facility will not accept a person unless they are medically cleared – especially if drugs or alcohol are involved. This typically requires the individual to be taken first to a hospital emergency room (ER) for a stay that can last hours or even days – and because ER facilities are not lockdown facilities and no one funds a 24/7 guard to watch them, they often slip out of the ER unnoticed.
Current law allows the US government to require all hospitals that accept Medicare to treat anyone regardless of immigration status or ability to pay so if the federal government wants to fix something, they should use the same legal arguments to require all hospitals that accept Medicare to provide at least one ER examining room that can be locked down to securely detain any person who is on a mental health hold until they can be transferred to a mental health facility for evaluation
It is also noted these laws are partially about “danger to self” and according to the CDC in 2016, 22018 people killed themselves with firearms and 22175 did it by other means and the proposed red flag laws that only confiscate firearms would not prevent an individual from employing “other means” – but confinement to a mental health facility would.
Re: “to amend the Constitution, based on the needs of contemporary society”
And what “contemporary society needs” would you suggest?
Re: “one of the discussions would be about the psychological profiles of many of the deranged shooters”
There are 2 problems with this. First, mental health issues aren’t necessarily present at the time of an evaluation and lots of mentally ill people “present well” – i.e. they are good at hiding their true personality unless it is inadvertently revealed in a psychotic break or crisis situation. The second problem is there are no objective criteria for a mental health evaluation. As is evidenced in court trials, you often have “experts” who disagree and reach completely different conclusions. When this ambiguity is married to regulations written by unaccountable bureaucrats and used by people who are trying to ban all guns from private citizens it would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for a law abiding citizen to own a firearm
Re: “An AR-15 fits exactly into that power profile through its appearance alone”
Even if all the guns could be banned, there are plenty of other methods available to murder a lot of people thanks to the internet – i.e things like pipe bombs (San Bernardino), pressure cooker bombs (Boston), propane tank bombs (Columbine High School), truck bombs (Oklahoma City), exotic battery bombs (Austin, TX), Molotov cocktails (Arapahoe High School), gasoline cans and a match (Happy Land fire on 3/25/90), heavy truck or SUV crashing in to a crowd of people (Nice, France and Waukesha, WI), RV bombs (Nashville, TN) home made flame throwers made from plumbing parts and gasoline (nowhere – yet) and any pressure vessel filled with shrapnel and gun powder manufactured the same way it has been since the 6th century that will momentarily confine an explosive pressure wave. And when any of those things are used and there are no civilian firearms to deter the government from limiting our Bill of Rights, it’s likely no one will know about them because at that point in order to silence any criticism for actions they can’t control and to maintain civilian support and power, the government has no reason to allow them to be reported. In other words, banning “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines just starts us down the road of incessant, progressive bans on other firearms with the end result being that only criminals and the government will have guns
It is also noted that several mass shootings are committed with handguns but the anti-gun folks focus is on eliminating the less prolific, low hanging fruit first – i.e. so called “assault rifles”. Google Fort Hood shooter if you want a perspective the media and anti-gun folks don’t extensively report on
Re: “Military-style assault rifles have to go”
You can’t blame today’s problem of mass murders on so called “assault weapons”. The first semi-automatic handgun was invented in the late 1800’s and the most popular version went into production in 1911. It is also noted the so-called evil “assault rifles” with standard capacity 30 round magazines are not new technology. The original version was invented by the Germans near the end of WWII and the current versions were invented in the late 1940’s and have always been available to the public (note the “47” in AK-47 stands for 1947, the year the firearm went into production). As a matter of fact fully automatic versions (i.e. machine guns), which are true military grade rifles, were readily available to the general public until 1986 and background checks on firearm transfers weren’t required until 1994 – yet nobody talks about mass shootings with any version (semi-automatic or automatic) of these guns during the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s so it’s a relatively new phenomenon and logic would indicate it’s being caused by something else.
The following was sent to me yesterday by my sister. It certainly resonates in the current conversation.
Subject: Guns
Guns
The Republican gun stance is sadly insane,
And the second amendment’s just partly to blame.
The Founders, though great, could still slip now and then,
(e.g., slavery’s fine, and “we the people” meant men).
“The right to bear arms” at the time seemed quite sane…
After all, those darn Brits might attack us again!
Most folks had to hunt to put food on their plates,
So having a gun seemed a natural state.
But the Founders weren’t able the future to see–
(Civil war to decide that all slaves should be free;
The need to fix by amendment–of note,
That people of color and females should vote;
Urbanization, technology, climate-change harm,
And sadly, th’unique-to-U.S. race to arm).
Concealed guns, assault guns, machine guns….We buy!
If the gun makers make them, the limit’s the sky!
To suggest having guns is a “God-given right”
Seems offensive to God and the concept of “right.”
But the makers of guns and the gunmakers’ shill—
The NRA lobby—have managed to fill
The Republican coffers right up to the top.
So all efforts to limit guns come to a stop!
Should terrorists have guns? Sure, give them a shot!
Should beaters of women and children? Why not?
Maybe each toddler should have one. When scared
By fears of a boogeyman climbing the stairs,
They can shoot first and kill it, and then kill another.
Oh no! How sad! They shot Daddy and Mother!
Just collateral damage, many thousands a year.
The people you know are the people to fear!
Preventable deaths, killed by family and friends.
Preventable mayhem it seems without end!
So, Republicans argue, we should each get a gun,
For protection perhaps–or to join in the fun?
“If you’ve a gun,” they say, “you’ve got nothing to fear,”
“Just be sure you’re the quickest at drawing, My Dear!”
If you’re not, well too bad, you’ve just joined the crowd
Of those tragically murdered–because it’s allowed.
Murder is allowed? Where? I think murder is illegal in all 50 states.
As to whether it is a fraud is in my view inconsequential, by that I mean that there is no way that man can dictate what God has declared. To do so would be to usurp GOD’S authority in the least. No man shall have power over my right to self defense and taking the life of one of GOD’S creatures shall only be judged by the creator,GOD. So yes in that sense the 2nd Amendment is a hoax.
What a crock of shit. Perhaps we should hold Democrats to the choices their presidents and party made in the past? If we should support all the policies of a parties past, perhaps you support FDR locking up Japanese Americans in WW2?
Both sides have shit presidents that make shit decisions that violate the constitution. We have a right to bear arms in this country that SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. The more you scream and cry about guns, the more gun owning Democrats you drive into the arms of the republicans.
GUNS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. GUNS HAVE NEVER, EVER BEEN THE PROBLEM. We’ve had guns for the entire life of this country. Until 1986 you could order a brand new machine gun. It wasn’t until gun free zones were created, the war on drugs was pushed, and the vast familial disconnect of the modern digital age came about, that this violence started. You create black markets that thrive on violence, disarm people and create soft targets, refuse to prosecute and imprison violent criminals, and completely tank morality and let youtube raise your kids, and then try and blame the guns for the mess you’ve created.
You drove this violence with your feel good policies that accomplish nothing and target only law abiding Americans. You preach the evils of guns while you disarm your cities, letting the tide of violence go unabated and the criminals that walk through your laws to flourish, and then blame the people who lawfully acquire guns for lawful purposes. Screw you, and the dimwitted horse you rode in on.
You want some “COMMON SENSE?” Criminals don’t give a damn about the old laws nor about any new laws. By definition, CRIMINALS don’t obey any laws they don’t want to obey…and only law-abiding citizens whom you want to make helpless will obey the dumbass laws you endorse, genius.
I have owned dozens of guns over the years, served 18 years in the Army carrying MACHINE GUNS, and I have literally NEVER shot anyone. And while I was sleeping, my AR-15s have never sneaked out of the house and shot up a school.
I support your right to share your stupid opinion, but perhaps you should opt to keep it to yourself.
I’ve never read a more uninformed article in my life, I’ve been a Democrat for 30+ years, and my Democrat party was always aredent defenders of the 2nd amendment and has been against the infringement of the individuals right to keep and bare arms, which by the way prevents the government for regulating any weapon used by the contemporary infantry soldier. Please watch this video in full and educate yourself before embarrassing yourself by posting patent nonsense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kXPvkHiUH4&list=FLY0eQUYqo6Ax1K7LElglCZg&index=4&t=217s
The same old, lame attempt at more gun control! I have an idea, let those who have armed security set the example first. Politicians first please. Practice what you preach. And as for the writer of the opinion piece, why not just bring back stop and frisk? Small 4th amendment infringement could save lives! No biggie. Remember, if it saves one life…
In conclusion, let the punishment fit the crimes! The punishment is supposed to thwart those who might commit crimes otherwise. That is the basis of any punishment for laws that are broken. As for the parents of children lost to mass shooters, I can guarantee that many would like to see the death penalty applied to the shooter and swiftly. Right to a speedy trial but more important, a right to a fair punishment for those victimized.
Its exhausting trying to validate my rights as a human being. I will defend myself from physical threats if needed, just like the Kenosha Kid! Just like the Subway Marine and many others who the mainstream public never hear about because of the biased media. Why not note how many crimes have been prevented as a result of a firearm Dear Author? Why not balance the opinion with some statistics showing common citizens preventing crimes by having or using a firearm? Like the saying goes, “Opinions are like a-holes, everyone has one.” Not all opinions have value though.
Have a great day and God bless you!
Mr. Weymouth’s ignorance is worrying and dangerous. It is the ignorance of the abattoir-bound ewe complaining bitterly of the Ram’s horns. The notion that governments do not commit atrocities is the liberal’s greatest folly and the singular instantiation of youth’s abject ignorance of history. A person, municipality, or nation intent on disarming men does so that it may do to easily to the unarmed what it can only do at its own peril to the armed.
Various respondents have referred to the Constitution and their belief that my commentary disrespects it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First, the Constitution is a road map, not an irrevocable document, as witnessed by the fact that, since its creation, it has been amended 27 times, mainly in response to contemporary issues. My suggestion that the Second Amendment be amended to take into account the growing problem of gun violence and in particular that posed by mass shooters, is not unreasonable. Unlike criminal elements, mentally disturbed mass shooters are very difficult to identify before they commit their crimes. True, gun-toting criminals will always be with us, but mentally unstable mass shooters are a new phenomena. Add the evolution of firearms to include rapid-fire military-styler assault weapons and we find ourselves in a toxic situation the Founders would most assuredly not have tolerated.
Second, the preamble to the Constitution states, We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Pay particular attention to “insure domestic tranquility” and “promote the general welfare.” What could be more egregious violations of these two precepts than a shooter opening fire in an elementary school classroom?
Third, the “love it or leave it” comment is a long-standing response to anyone who believes in fixing dysfunctional aspects of our society. In this case, contrary to all replies, I never suggested getting rid of the Second Amendment, I said it should be amended. Big difference.
The contention that liberal judges have been releasing violent criminals prematurely is wrong. If a gun is involved in a crime, the criminal is subject to minimum sentencing, which all judges, liberal or conservative, must comply with: Section 924(c) of title 18, United States Code, prohibits using or carrying a firearm during and in relation to, or possessing a firearm in furtherance of, a “crime of violence” or “drug trafficking crime.” The statute prescribes a mandatory minimum penalty of at least five years of imprisonment, with increasingly longer penalties based on how the firearm was used (seven years if the firearm was brandished and ten years if the firearm was discharged) and the type of firearm involved in the crime (ten years if the firearm was a short-barreled rifle, a short-barreled shotgun, or a semiautomatic assault weapon and 30 years if the weapon was a machine gun, a destructive device or was equipped with a silencer or muffler).
Speaking of machine guns, In 1934, the National Firearms Act (NFA) was enacted. We never see criminal actors using fully automatic weapons now. They were banned by the NFA. if Congress can ban those weapons, why can’t it ban military-style assault weapons?
Other nations have managed to deal with reducing gun violence much more successfully than we have. There is a lot we can learn from them. For starters we have to stop thinking in terms of “American Superiority.” When it comes to dealing with gun violence, we are far from superior.
Re: “My suggestion that the Second Amendment be amended to take into account the growing problem….”
So what “amendments” do you propose
Re: “Add the evolution of firearms to include rapid-fire military-styler assault weapons and we find ourselves in a toxic situation the Founders would most assuredly not have tolerated”
Not true. There were harbingers of modern firearms in the 1700’s – to name a few; the 1718 Puckle gun, the 1757 Ferguson Rifle, and the 1781 Giordani Rifle.that was carried by the Lewis and Clarke expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson who was very familiar with the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights. And there were no restrictions on law-abiding citizens owning any of them.
Re: “What could be more egregious violations of these two precepts than a shooter opening fire in an elementary school classroom?”
The government “misconstructing or abusing its powers” would be “more egregious” which is the reason stated for the amendments in the “preamble” to the Bill of Rights (including the 2nd) and note that governments (unlike individuals) hold the world record for killing people that don’t agree with them.
Re: ” The contention that liberal judges have been releasing violent criminals prematurely is wrong”
It’s not the judges as much as the prosecutors that plea bargain away the firearm offenses or never bring the charges initially.
Re: “If a gun is involved in a crime, the criminal is subject to minimum sentencing, which all judges, liberal or conservative, must comply with”
Seriously? Laws are enforced at the discretion of the people in charge of the justice system. That’s why plea-bargains exist. And an obvious example regarding guns are the statistics I quoted with regard to failing a background check.
Re: “Speaking of machine guns, In 1934, the National Firearms Act (NFA) was enacted. We never see criminal actors using fully automatic weapons now”
Sure we do. Illegal ones all the time. Google Glock switch.
Re: “They were banned by the NFA”
No they weren’t. Civilians can and do own military grade weapons under the provisions of the 1934 NFA and you don’t hear about any of them being used to commit a crime. However in some cases the owners have to comply with federal, state, and local ordinances regarding the transportation and storage of explosives. The only things I am aware of that are specifically outlawed are WMD’s by treaty and machine guns manufactured after 1986 and that law was passed by Democrats using unethical means and the SCOTUS has never ruled on its Constitutionality. Nevertheless, according to the BATF there are currently 175977 fully automatic, legal, pre-1986 machine guns in civilian hands and I can find only one that was used in a crime since 1934 and that was by a police officer using his personal MAC-11 submachine gun to murder a suspected drug dealer in an unauthorized drug raid on September 15, 1988 in Dayton, OH
Re: “if Congress can ban those weapons, why can’t it ban military-style assault weapons?”
Congress didn’t ban them. Congress just taxed them. And regarding any effort to ban them, anti-gun folks often quote Scalia’s comment in the Heller decision about restrictions on carrying guns as justification but if you read his comments he was careful to avoid saying the government can ban any firearms they don’t like.
Re: “Other nations have managed to deal with reducing gun violence much more successfully than we have”
Depends on how you cherry pick the “nations” and be leery of doing those where the government controls the press. Left leaning Wikipedia puts the US 18th worldwide and even if you couch it as “developed nations” like several anti-gun groups do, the US still ranks lower than Brazil, Mexico, Philippines and Costa Rica