Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

See, the pro-life lobby and the pro-choice lobby get this concept. You can't start a discussion on gun control in what is now the middle and expect to get anywhere because one side will not start in the middle, one side starts from their end, and argues that everything you concede should warrant further concessions. You have to argue from the position of, "no guns at all." Then you each try to convince the people, and if it's close, you compromise. It is ok to want to take away everyone's guns and it is ok to want to amend the Constitution and it is ok to state as much. It's ok to have stupid ideas and ideas that are impossible. The alternative is that everyone who wants to increase safety a little bit gets treated like a wild eyed maniac that wants to take away everyone's guns.

Honestly, as much as I value the Second Amendment because I value all our rights, guns are going to be regulated more strictly for two reasons. 1. Innocent victims. 2. The NRA refused to back pro-gun Democrats because their legislative agenda in recent years has turned them in less of a pure Second Amendment lobby and more of a generalized Republican PAC. Because enough Democrats know there is nothing they can do to charm the NRA, and that they can now win without them, their Grover Norquist level of influence will wane slightly.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/19/us/politics/nra.html

Policy change is often times a long game. You're right that there's little that can be done to effect change NOW, other than making criminals of current gun owners. But that doesn't mean policy shouldn't be passed that can effect change in the long run. Flat out banning new sales of guns and grandfathering all existing guns will mean that the gun count will slow and naturally drop (guns will come out of circulation through wear and seizure by law enforcement) and programs (such as buy backs) can be put in place to help accelerate that. This sort of change won't have a dramatic effect over the next few years but could significantly reduce the number of guns in society over the next few decades.

I apologize if you think that a person that knows nothing about the subject (and I'm not saying that you don't as I really don't know) should be promoting ideas for making changes for such subjects.

Would you want someone that knows nothing of budgeting and how our nations money spent making the decisions about the economy? How about someone who knows nothing about healthcare, or what it's like to not have healthcare provided by your employer to make decisions about the nations healthcare.

I simply don't care for people that know little to nothing about firearms, trying to make decisions on something they simply do not understand.

Take an hour out of your day, go with a friend that owns and knows how to use a gun, and go to a indoor gun range and fire some rounds off with a revolver and/or a semi automatic pistol. Learn how to reload that pistol. Learn that ANY gun fires as quickly as you can pull the trigger, and the triggers really aren't all that different (no guns have some sort of delayed reaction or anything). Learn that reloading even to the novice takes mere seconds. So very many of peoples fears, absolutely unfounded fears, and misconceptions will be answered.

As a side note a little about myself. I am not a religious fanatic, a bible beater, or anything like that. I do not stockpile guns nor do I stockpile ammo. I am very very far from being a "gun-nut". I do however have strong opinions about the rights we as americans already have, and have strong opinions about "keeping" those rights so they don't get "Routinely" taken away. Talk to me about software and music/film "piracy", fair use, DMCA, the MPAA, etc. and you will find I also have strong opinions I am willing to voice about such rights and privileges. Guns and gun rights are quite far from my most heart-held topics, but it's the one that consistently is being trampled by people that don't understand guns, understand guns impact on society, or just want to "do something" towards gun rights so they "feel better" rather than making a change that will actually make a difference.

There's a fair amount of political enthusiasm for gun control, it's just regionally concentrated. If you could think of gun control measures that would effective if implemented regionally, then I think that kind of measure would.be realistic politically. Gun control aimed at the acquisition of forearms would probably be ineffective because of availability in other regions, but gun control related to use, storage, or liability could be effective even implemented in a regional level.

Can we please just admit that maybe quotation mark control is a good idea finally?

... You boiled egg of a human being, I'll try to break it down.

First: what's your deal with revolvers? I don't think Lanza was a sports/veteran shooter who could do the Rambo thing. I suppose he could have been, but, you know... a bigger fucking gun enveloped his skillful fingers.

Second: This isn't Taxi Driver. The "psycho paths" that you refer to aren't like you (with your trained fingers on the magazines and your claws on the clips) with their planning.

This world is decidedly more difficult than that. There was a butcher. He might've (might have) butchered less, but he didn't.

And... my point got away from me. Screw it.

eh... the point I was trying to get across, is that a novice can fully reload any firearm (aside from maybe a bolt action) in a matter of seconds. Key word there is novice. And I am betting that these people that have the intent on doing some massacre practice as such before doing so, or plan in advance.

I also do not practice reloading guns, or seeing how quickly I can switch out magazines or anything like that. My hard on for revolvers is that these are probably the last firearms that will be regulated due to the false impression by some that they are less lethal or that they shoot extremely slow or reload extremely slow. Did we skim over the whole bit where you don't need to be a Rambo figure to be able to reload a firearm in a few seconds? These Rambo types you speak of can reload in less than half a second:

and jeeze, everyone get off the high horse of someone being pro-gun rights or pro-american rights being some flag waving, republican, religious zealot, gun nut, ammo stockpiler, racist, or whatever nonsense.

you don't see the pro-gun rights people throwing hippy, socialist, athiest, democrat, or whatever nonsense people like to attribute to pro gun control people.

It's childish

What Pacodeth is trying to say is that one can obtain a level of familiarity with firearms as far above a layperson's understanding as with any other instrument, be it C++, engine repair, or woodworking. Laws regarding clips would have an effect only on novices, and most spree killers have the materials and time to acquire a proficiency level above where reloading consumes a significant amount of time. A thirty round clip is still a benefit and a convenience, but the lack of a banana clip the size of Chiquita's South American operations will not place a significant crimp in the killer's plans.

Also, remember the pro-gun people in this thread are still on this forum. You have most things in common with them, even accounting for a massive disagreement on this subject. You don't even need to own a gun to be in favor of the Second Amendment. You don't even need to like guns to be in favor of the Second Amendment. I don't, and I am. Personally, I understand that I get a wide berth with my Free Speech that other people aren't using and won't. I extend the same courtesy to other people who enjoy a different Freedom guaranteed by our Bill of Rights that I as an individual find impolite and unwise.

Yes, there is no shortage of gun nuts in this country, but they are not on this forum. Our most fierce right wingers aren't even gun enthusiasts. Most of the people on this forum who like guns are atheists who vote straight ticket Democrat.

All of those things; that's absolutely not true; your mom.

What he said *thumbs up*

I think you mean magazines, Mister President.

Quite frankly, nobody needs a thirty-round magazine. If you need thirty rounds to hit your target, you are a poor shot and should not have a gun. (I'd apply this to the military as well, since I disagree with the training doctrine that prioritizes volume of fire over accuracy but that's just me...)

If you have someone who can kill six people with six bullets in a panic situation - that guy could probably do the same thing with a rock or an axe or a fire extinguisher. The rarest of the rare who can do something like that, you can't make laws to stop. They're like hurricanes, you can't outlaw them or prevent them, you just accept that they're going to happen and sometimes life sucks.

But the fact remains that for the average Joe Whackadoodle, having a weapon that can put more bullets through the barrel in less time allows for a volume of fire that is going to be more dangerous than a slow salvo. I could pick a random person out of a crowd and hand them a semi-automatic rifle and then a single-shot breech loader, and they'll be able to put more rounds on target in less time with the semi-automatic. However, for what I consider to be legitimate uses of a firearm (subsistence hunting) - all you need is one shot at a time. Anything else, you don't need and so shouldn't have because it adds more chance of misuse.

That's Mr. Dead Prez to you.

No. But they are already. In fact, the way our government is designed is that most decisions are going to be made by people without deep knowledge on the subject. Instead, hopefully, the people who make decisions rely on people with deep knowledge to advise them. You appear be upset at the idea that guns aren't special and will be legislated by the same people who legislate everything else.

This doesn't really deserve a response, but I've been angry enough at some of the things I've read elsewhere in the last 48 hours I'm going to give it one anyways.

In particular, I've seen this abhorrent screed (WARNING: RAGE INDUCING) posted in my local gun forum with many folks cheering it on. I knew there were a few fringe types there, but as of this moment I'm writing off that forum entirely. There are certainly some sane people there, but no mistake: the frothing 2A defense teams are out in force.

I am a gun owner and generally lean towards gun rights. I'm expecting my first kid early next year. You'd better believe I've spent the last 5 days thinking about my values, and I'd like to think there some other sane gun owners doing the same.

Here in Canada, the government imposed a capacity limit on pistol magazines (maximum of 10 rounds) and rifle magazines (maximum of 5 rounds, with the exception of the Lee-Enfield's 10-round magazines). The government's thinking was that a crazed shooter wouldn't be able to shoot that many people before reloading.

Of course, with proper training and muscle memory you can reload magazines within seconds and there is also no law limiting the number of magazines you can carry. I have a tactical vest that can hold 12 AR rifle magazines and my holster can hold seven pistol magazines. As a civilian I can only use a pistol holster in a government recognized range and even then I have to pass the range's pistol and holster safety courses (the pistol ranges are not supervised by Range Officers).

It appears all of the right-wing American gun owners' fears have come true...

I think "if you reduce clip sizes spree killers will spend years practicing to become speed reloaders" may be just a little bit of an unsupported extrapolation.

Lol, I know you were mostly kidding. But I'd say more like spending a couple of weeks or even weekends practicing. Years of course if they want to match that guy in the video I linked that can do it in under a second.

Someone with MANY years of training shooting non-semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, and rifles.

Posting speed loading gun nerdery videos in a thread about gunned down elementary kids will definitely tell us something, but tbh I don't think it's the point you guys want to make.

Read the rest of the thread FFS. We've already determined that NOTHING is going to stop the truly determined.

So apparently the way guns work, they can be reloaded fast. Therefore, let's invent a doodad that allows some low number of rounds per minute, say six, and physically locks out the trigger to enforce that. Mandate its installation on all new firearms for public sale; mandate its installation when an existing firearm changes ownership. No compatible doodad for the gun you want sell? I'm sure there would be other people in the same boat, so it sounds like a market opportunity! Hunters get to hunt, sport shooters get to shoot, home defenders to get to, uh, defend their homes, I guess the people specializing in quick reloads will need to look for alternate opportunities to display their dexterity.

One thing that I've yet to read about was how well secured the firearms that belonged to the Newtown shooter's mother. Obviously she knew her son had mental and/or social issues but somehow he got access to her legally purchased guns.

Here in Canada, only the firearms owner are allowed access to securely locked guns (minimally with a trigger lock but ideally in a locked cabinet or safe). For example, in a household where only the husband has a gun license and the firearms are registered to him the wife is not suppose to have access to the firearms or know the safe combination. So if the police stop by and asks the wife to see if her husband's firearms are stored properly and she opens the safe to prove it, the husband can be charged for improper storage of firearms.

Wouldn't it be easier to pass laws enforcing gun safety and proper storage first or would the NRA fight that tooth and nail? Hundreds of lives in the US would be saved each year from needless accidental shootings, which usually involve kids.

One sided are we? Why don't you jump down the throats of the people that repeatedly mention reducing the magazine capacity size as a way of gun control. Maybe you should read the rest of the thread and go thread police everyone that has mentioned something twice.

There are also more people joining this discussion and new people joining it. Others that have also mentioned not reading the thread in it's entirety. This forum has fairly long pages, and I started at something like 16 pages in. Tried to read from beginning at work today to satiate the thread cops, but only had time to get to page 6. Sorry :(

And to AlanT, a gun that only fires every so many seconds would be considered a crappy gun. I'm not going to argue for home defense reasoning, but if someone comes barging into your bedroom at 4am, you damn sure don't want to rely on a single shot to put someone down.

Another thing I noticed is that the news media and the anti-gun advocates rarely, if ever, mention that the shooter had tried to purchase a rifle from a local sports store but was turned away (I believe there was a three-day waiting period). Until the point where he stole his mother's guns the current gun laws worked. A would-be shooter was deterred, no?

How difficult would it be to close the gun show private sale loophole where there's no need for a background check? Here in Canada there are no waiting periods or background checks since every gun owner has been checked by the RCMP when they applied for their gun license.

You misunderstand; a maximum of six (or whatever) shots per minute does not require one every 10 seconds. If you can get 'em all off accurately in 2 seconds, go right ahead. But then you have to wait.

Anyway, the point of that is not as a particularly serious suggestion, but because I don't think the argument that "This is how guns work, full stop" is, in the long term, that much of an argument. The details of how they work can be changed. The larger problem is that of dealing with the day-to-day access to and safe handling of these things.

I can only police facts.

Yeah, that guy who's calling you a religious zealot racist is a dick. Who was that, again?

Get off your cross already. You came in here looking for a fight, and now you're acting all hurt that you got one. You aren't fooling anybody.

Speaking in general, the tone of the gun control people in this thread, not for me personally.

So far I have seen consistent points made that limiting magazine size, or changing out from an AR-15 to a semi-auto pistol or even revolver wouldn't have stopped this tragedy. You can't simply slow down a semi-automatic firearms rate of fire. Reloading is fairly easy and with minimal practice can be done quickly. So what are we arguing for when it comes to gun control? The only I see are direct attacks from the Gun Control side.

Oh and it was Oz that made the religious bit, I haven't yet seen racism brought in here, but it isn't unheard of to see in one of these discussions. You seem to misinterpret the reason for alot of people coming to a forum. I came for a discussion, not some nonsensical bickering, name calling, or a fight.

Alot of me came here to see if there truly is a legitimate, and feasible (for the US) gun control measure that could have stopped this tragedy, or tragedies like it. So far I have yet to see one. The only one that even comes close, is the eventual disarmament of the american people via routine and stacking gun control regulations, which I am absolutely wholeheartedly against.

There's no good reason to keep a loaded gun in the home in a place where it is accessible. None. If you are concerned about your security you'd get far better value from better locks than from owning a gun. They'd also have the added advantages of protecting your home while you weren't in it and no-one accidentally shoots themselves or others with them. Lanza (like most spree killers) had access to legally purchased guns. It's not such a stretch to point out that if he was not able to access guns so easily then a lot of people who are now dead might well be alive instead.

Guns are not special, they don't need to be protected more than any other manufactured item. Losing them will not immediately bring about an Orwellian future in which people are no longer free. Plenty of societies which are at least as free as the US survive pretty well without needing to arm every chucklefuck who doesn't understand the cost/benefit ratio of a gun vs $200 worth of blacksmithing.

What a bunch of nonsense, I see this sort of thing all the time.

I'm totally going to try this line on our CFO next time we submit a budget. The logic is impeccable. He doesn't understand IT stuff, so really we shouldn't need his approval to spend money at all. He's obviously not capable of making a reasonable decision about it.

Do these other societies/countries have over 300 million firearms already in the hands of the public to deal with? And trust that every single home in the U.S. has good locks, but people still become victims of crime. What about when someone bumrushes you as you try to enter your front door? Lot of good those locks do you then. Don't underestimate the criminals, people having their homes robbed happens all the time in the U.S., and all of these homes no doubt have good locks throughout. 300 million guns out in the populace, and you better believe that a portion of those are in the hands of criminals meaning to do harm.

Oooh. Tell us the one about the black helicopters next.

Please, let's not patronize.
But your CFO does understand money and budget, that's why he has the job that he does. And that is why you have the job in I.T. that you do, because you know what sort of I.T. equipment your company needs in order to get the job done. Sure, you can lie and tell him that you need things which you don't, that is your risk to run, and it could cost you your job. Your CFO also runs a risk by trusting in what you say you need, then he/she will go to the books and make sure it fits within the budget, then grants you approval if it is within the budget.

You both have your jobs to do, you both are (hopefully) in that position because you are good at said job. You don't go to your CFO and tell him how to run the books, and how to budget the rest of the company outside of I.T. And your CFO doesn't come into your I.T. department and tell you how to run your servers, or when to do backups, or what the password policy is.

Your logic is flawed and irrational, not at ALL what I was saying.

Yeah.

I don't understand why we're indulging the home defense mythology at all. It's not even worth discussing. Roughly twice as many people are killed by accidental discharges every year as die in "legal intervention" ones, AKA shooting dudes trying to take your TV. There's just no way to justify that ratio, even if you are willing to accept the rather barbaric notion that shooting a TV thief is a proportionate and justified response.

Home defense use doesn't automatically mean you shoot someone.

You're right, no crime happens in the U.S., no criminals use guns to commit these crimes, there is never a home invasion. People are never robbed at gunpoint, or robbed in their homes, or raped in their homes, or have people break a window out and enter their homes while they sleep.

Someone during a lengthy presentation recently warned of keeping an eye out while you get your keys out and unlock the door to your car or your home. Guess who it was that warned of this thing and being the most dangerous thing people overlook in their day to day business. Oh yeah, it was a police officer. A police officer that is in charge of at the highest ranks of the security and safety of over 30,000 students, and many thousand employees of a large university in the U.S.

These were his words, not mine, and he was dead serious about it. This is the guy that takes in all of the statistics of crime around campus, the one that considers common tactics by criminals, and does everything he can to protect the public, and ensure they understand how to protect themselves.

A good friend of mine also made an interesting statement. This is a friend that never owned a firearm before joining the police force. His first gun was a department issued firearm (he has since purchased 3 different firearms I believe). After many recent years as a police officer he has moved on to a safer and less stressful job (his opinion) in being a fireman (has two kids now and worries about his mortality). This is a guy that went through being a normal police officer patrolling the twilight hours, then daytime, then detective, was part of a regional swat team (he was the guy with the big door breacher!). Also he was a police officer in a reasonably small rural town. His words to me, and forgive me for not remembering them exactly, went somewhere along the lines of "After all that I have seen, the people I have had to deal with, and the crimes I have had to work, I think anyone who doesn't have a gun in their home for self defense is an idiot"

FWIW, I personally don't take firearm defense too seriously in my own home. I do have good locks on my doors, and have actually installed a security system with motion detecting cameras (mainly to catch people robbing my home while I'm away). I don't keep a loaded firearm in my house or at my bedside or anything. I do however keep a very large knife near my bed (I dunno, maybe I just like a challenge?). If I had a wife or kids, this would change and I absolutely would keep a loaded pistol somewhere in my bedroom, secure from access to kids, but easy enough for me to get out quickly to defend my family.

It's just paranoid fantasy, and all you'll get by dissecting it is ever more complex fantasies in response.

OH YEAH? WELL WHAT IF YOU'RE BUMRUSHED AT YOUR FRONT DOOR BY A GUY WITH A SHARK AND AN CROCODILE AND THE CROCODILE HAS AN UZI? SECOND AMENDMENT'S LOOKIN PRETTY GOOD RIGHT NOW, HUH, HOTSHOT?