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

Meanwhile FrankA walks his dog hoping his Cape Fear guy is bluffing. Yay.

Lots of people think that. And some of those people re-assess after losing a child.

Well, if the gangs were trained in marksmanship, wouldn't they stop firing 50 rounds at their targets, thereby decreasing the risk of hitting innocent civilians?

"No no no, all he's saying is that if we train the gangs in proper shooting technique, we would have less innocent deaths"
-Chesterbro Swurvgood
PR Spokesperson, Pogo For President Campaign

Right now, over here, it seems like there's some kind of shooting in US every week.

Here's a quick summary of the shootings we've heard of over here.

• December 12th, three killed in a shooting at an Oregon Mall
• December 24th, two firemen shot in New York
• January 5th, four killed in Aurora
• January 16th, two killed, one wounded in Kentucky
• January 20th, five killed in Albuquerque
• January 22nd, three wounded on a Texas campus

Or maybe our news networks started paying attention after the Newton tragedy, and it has always been like this?

Correct.

That's fucked up.

I was just referring to a restraining order (500 yards away or what have you), which you can get at no charge, without a lawyer, and which can in fact be served on a person without knowing a name or address, as long as you can describe him in a way that identifies him can find him to have him served. The link above has the process and all needed forms, but if you're interested I could send you more info. However, I just mentioned it since I happen to know about it, I don't mean to butt in to your business.

My dad would vote for you, he's been espousing that same point for years. "If only we could teach them not to hold the gun sideways, and to actually aim, they wouldn't miss and hit the little girl just getting out of school."

While I'm generally on board with this type of interpretation, CA just banned open carry in 2011 in the context of modern 2nd Amendment activists carrying to make a point.

Nah, fucked up is what actually happens in areas of urban violence that just straight up doesn't get reported on. I once looked at a house rental in Oakland and later checked on a Crimespotting map if anything had happened there recently. Six people had been shot directly in front of it the day before. Not a peep in any media.

I was under the distinct impression that without at least an address or name here, simply describing a person wasn't enough to get a restraining order. I'll take a look at the relevant paperwork when I get some more time tonight.

It's a good shout and I appreciate it, not because I think it'll make him change his behavior beyond making him angrier and more likely to act out, but the longer the paper trail is with this guy the better.

EDIT: I checked with a local lawyer friend, and she says that you need at least a name if not an address in CA because there's no way to get the other party to show up for the hearing otherwise. The form for a Civil Harassment RO ( http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/ch100.pdf ) requires a name but not an address.

I would say that we don't know the degree to which they matter, because it's really hard to predict what measures will affect the severity of gun crimes relative to the inconvenience/reduction of capabilities they represent for law-abiding citizens who need them for self-defense. So, for instance, while I don't personally need gun storage, I would be in favor of a program that added an insurance benefit for using it or otherwise softened the economic blow of purchasing it (for instance, reducing the penalties and bullshit in homeowner's insurance that will then allow you to claim it more easily once you have a system in place) if it was also paired with substantive research that demonstrated potential benefits or persuasively hypothesized them (and would be tracking results). I think the math for anyone including you might change if you had children in the house, and it might be worth factoring that in relative to yours and my situation in ideas about proposals. I would be in favor of magazine restrictions if they could be shown to have a systemic benefit in return for the marginal inconvenience to homeowners of storing an extra mag next to their gun.

I don't think either of those measures is an unreasonable starting point for the conversation if we can have a conversation that shuts out pro-gun absolutists and people who are simply grasping at symbolic measures, because I'm fucking tired of the much stronger first category and the inept second category dominating the conversation. I get that assault weapons bans are typically premised around foggy notions of assault weapon as a category and that they would have a marginal effect on crime, but if there's a data-based recommendation that removing them from the same category of access as handguns would likely ameliorate spree shootings and extraordinary crimes then I would be willing to listen. And so on.

So I'm glad that you are ok, and I respect that your situation as a gun owner is totally different from mine as a gun owner. And if nothing else, you know I know many of the same facts about gun mechanics and the tactical math that surrounds them as you do, and we agree on a technical level. But in terms of the national discourse on guns, I'm willing to put the heat on the NRA for as long as it takes for decent research to get back in motion. While I think guns are a symptom of serious problems in the US rather than a cause, they are an aggravating symptom that could likely be dealt with a lot more reasonably once we get past the absolutists.

Ah, my bad. It was just open carry of loaded weapons that Governor Reagan banned in 1968 due to scary black people.

I just checked with the Civil Self-Help lawyer here and he said that you might get away with doing a John Doe if you had good enough identifying info, but you would then have trouble getting valid service, as you say, and even if you got the order it couldn't be entered into the state system (CLETS). So, boo on that. Sorry for the mis-info there.

When the 1994 AWB was up for renewal in 2004 there were more then a few stuides that argued that the evidence did not support that it had had any real effect. The murder rate actually went down during that period, but that trend started before the AWB and has continued since. At any rate, the Wikipedia article on the 1994 AWB has the details.

That's what I mean about assault weapons bans that target the wrong variables and in any case are mistakenly proposed as a measure against crime rather than spree shootings, where there might be easy concessions that limit their availability or usefulness in those scenarios. The key is not to let it get turned into the same discussion about technical aspects/"why do you *need* this weapon you madman" that the NRA is going to continue to turn into a touchdown.

My issue with the focus on the AWB is that "assault weapons" are a small part of the problem (although Sandy Hook has understandably focused attention on them). The AWB probably didn't make much difference, simply because of the numbers.

2011 FBI stats show Handguns 6,220 deaths, Rifles 323, Shotguns 356, Unknown 1,684.

Not everything that is done by people you disapprove of is for racist reasons. You seem to think anyone who doesn't think like you is a racist.

Here you go, Brett. You don't have to agree with the conclusions, but it's pretty obvious why many people think it was fear of the Black Panthers that spurred his gun control initiative. (note: that's not an Atlantic author but a constitutional scholar pitching his book, fwiw).

In this case, it really was. The law was passed pretty much the minute the Black Panthers marched on the capitol openly carrying weapons. The law was proposed because the Black Panthers had taken to openly carrying weapons in the state. The Mulford Act was objectively a response to black people carrying weapons openly en masse.

Apparently this is the list of firearms to be banned under the US AWB. It looks bigger than Canada's list of Prohibited firearms.

Banned from what? Sale? Ownership? Gun ranges? Hunting? That one picture's been making the rounds but I have yet to see context for it.

A good chunk of those are autos that are already banned/grandfathered anyway.

Alot of those are just variations on the same gun. No! Not the AK47 AND the AK47-S!!! AND the AK74??? Those MONSTERS! But at least the AKS is...Nooooooooooooo!!!!!

It's like banning the blue guy AND the red guy from an old NES game.

Edit: HAHA! I just noticed that the list lists guns by manufactures. The Sig Sauer AND the Rock River Sig Sauer is being banned AND the RFB(?) Sig Sauer! I thought I had found a loophole!

Supposedly it's from Feinstein's newly introduced bill, which I cannot find the text of.

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons summary, other PR stuff from her office

the bill itself should be up tomorrowish at the USGPO's FDSYS site
http://1.usa.gov/10VBF1I

The 74 and it's variants chamber a completely different round.

Also, trust me, in this case specific is good. Nobody will have the excuse of "well, it's an AK-74, not an AK-47!" Not that it's likely to pass anyways.

Some interesting studies linked on that page, although it's unclear to me how they make it a good idea to simply update the old ban rather than engineer a new one driven by specifics about capabilities with specific connections to how those connections affect systemic crime, for which the brands and models serve as examples. It seems to me they are missing an opportunity when they don't focus the assault weapons issues around unusual crimes, because otherwise they are going to be relying heavily on confiscation numbers and other self-reinforcing cycles of data that aren't going to be persuasive outside of people that are already against assault weapons.

Make it the manufacturer's problem: form the equivalent of a vaccine court for guns; watch the American public shoot arms manufacturers to death.

If that's actual proposed law, and it makes it to the floor, I'd at least be happy to see them making the far-left argument instead of starting somewhere in the squishy middle. It won't pass, but I prefer a fight to an up-front resignation.

But they are all based on the same basic design so it's hardly a surprise that both the gun and the version of the gun that's slightly different are banned.

Oh I know, I thought that list was a "OMG look at all the guns banned!!!" type thing

Just to throw some fuel on the fire:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/how-assault-weapons-ban-could-affect-your-bacon

(Though for prairie dogs, I don't think you'd need that high of a caliber to plink away at them...)

So because the government can hire well trained people to handle pig populations and arm them appropriately, EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO BUY ONE!

No.

The government is already spending huge chunks of cash to try to control these feral pigs, and the problem isn't going away. So I can at least understand it from that front. Especially if you're a landowner who has to deal with the problem. (Though shooting one and having the rest flee should be enough to solve the problem until some licensed pig hunters cleanse the area)

EDIT: That and I'd be completely okay with a system where a huge magazine / weapon is assigned to someone to go out hunting with, and they have to return it afterwards. Not all that different than not being able to keep your tank or machinegun from when you were in the army.

Just throwing this out there: you might not need to throw that much lead downrange if you weren't shooting from a really fucking loud and relatively unstable platform at long range.

This was mostly me wondering how many pigs they're trying to kill in how many seconds here that two shooters with 8-10 rounds each in a semi auto couldn't accomplish effectively. The answer is they're seemingly hosing down herds from a fucking helicopter.

The other lovely one:

I think the night vision scope is what did the trick for night hunting, not the 40 round mag, dude.

Assault weapons aren't high caliber, by and large, although foreign-grown designs tend to favor larger rounds versus the M16 variants' 5.56mm, all of which are small relative to hunting rifle rounds (it's confusing as many of those are referred to outside of the NATO mm measure) and roughly equivalent to a more accurate, better powered .22. It's not the caliber per se that makes them lethal or dangerous to humans (especially relative to generally higher caliber pistol rounds), but many of their essential traits, specifically the high velocity and accurate, rapid fire are what make them useful in this application.* You could say pig hunting along with other similar targets make an unusually assault rifle-friendly exception in terms of what people tend to visualize as the needs of hunters.

It's charming how it's suddenly essential to discredit the methods of people who do wild animal control for a living instead of just considering ways to fit edge cases into broad legislation coherently (as you are, to your credit). It's not like this is being brought into the conversation in a diversionary effort from gun advocates.

"I played Call of Duty, I totally understand how to fix their scenario."


*One useful thing to watch for is the second number in describing ammunition, which gives you a better overall picture of the "size" of a round/cartridge, along with the weight or grain. But even then, you are entering the fairly confusing realm of stopping power, which is a field that has about as much witchcraft as science.
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's not exceptionally useful to use technical terms unless you are confident that they are the indicators you are looking for. Magazine size, while controversial in its own right, is the kind of thing that people can grasp a lot more straightforwardly. This is what I mean when I say that I would like for Feinstein to adopt a more scientific/public education grounded approach to advancing her ideas about gun control, much the same that any of us would wish legislators had a working understanding of the internet before they start regulating it or allowing special interests to dictate the terms.

I think to handle the pig problem we just need scientists to engineer a better swine flu. That totally won't end badly at all.

Sorry, I should have been more clear, for a prairie dog, I would almost think a BB gun would be good enough. (Could be wrong, so I didn't want to elaborate) And I don't really care about magazine regulations on BB guns or Air rifles. That's why I mentioned caliber. Though I agree LK, it's a giant mess trying to figure out caliber as someone whose knowledge is mostly from videogames.

If the pig problem is that big, I know some National Guard units that don't do much on their weekend.

I have a semi-auto Remington pellet gun that uses CO2 cartridges and can spit out about 50 pellets before I need to fill it again. I would think that would be pretty effective against prairie dogs; it works pretty well against squirrels raiding the bird feeders.

edit: whoops, my Remington needs to be pumped. Where's my other air rifle...

edit: Ah, my semi-auto is the Evanix Conquest with a 30 pellet rotating mag.

I am continually baffled why we rely on mass non-recreational hunting to control populations of stuff like pigs. Wolves exist! Let them out, put together an insurance fund to compensate for livestock losses.