Given that this is exactly the strategy of the opposing actors, I can see why 2nd amendment advocates take this stance.
If you look at basically any other country where there's still a debate open on this topic, you'll note that it is indeed a slippery slope. Here in Canada, the RCMP (equiv. FBI) can arbitrarily reclassify any firearm and demand that it be confiscated and destroyed (not sold). For example, the other year they reclassified the Ruger 10/22 (IIRC the most popular target shooting rifle in Canada) as a "restricted weapon", requiring an RPAL instead of a PAL.
Funny thing about the Restricted Possession and Acquisition License is that if you have one, you forfeit your chartered protection against unwarranted search and seizure. The government can literally search your home and take your things at any time for any reason without providing justification to a court or record. In fact, they often do.
Let's say the nice lady down the way purchased a 10/22 to do target shooting, and didn't get the memo from the RCMP (10+ years later). Now, she either contravenes the law (most long guns still do not require registration, just license) and lives in fear that the authorities might find that she has a 10/22; or she finds an RFSC to get her RPAL, and the RCMP decides arbitrarily that she should be allowed to have an RPAL (because they have no obligation to issue one, even if they have no reason not to), and now she has no protection against search and seizure in her home.
I might also add that firearms laws in California are basically the same as they are in Canada in many practical senses, except the classification and search and seizure stuff (which would be even more obviously unconstitutional). Most of the firearms used in crimes here in Canada are smuggled or illegally manufactured. Nonetheless, Californians kill each other far more regularly. It's almost as though the argument for gun control is thin and questionable, and the only way to prop it up is through deliberate dishonesty or accidental ignorance.
If one has a desire to, I doubt it would take more than a few days for one to purchase a handgun illegally.
I'd like to see some compromise in the other direction too. Like "Ok, we'll relax CCP regulations or 'assault weapons' regulations so that normal citizens can have them, but in return we need to ramp up background checks in X and Y ways". That's how compromise should work, but instead with gun control it's very one-sided compromise.
It turns out the loudest (read: most visible) people on both sides of any given debate are the least likely to compromise.
A reasonable thing would be to almost totally restrict pistols, but the Constitution hasn't been amended on the matter since the days when a rifled barrel on a long gun was cutting edge technology, so we have people walking around with highly dangerous concealable weapons.
I mean, I wouldn't want to face someone wielding a machete anymore than I'd want to face someone wielding a bag of revolvers, but at least with the machete they are going to have to physically work quite a bit to kill each person they want to kill.
I'm also not real sure what your point is. I said I wouldn't want to face someone wielding a machete anymore than. I was acknowledging that a malicious person can be plenty dangerous with weapons that basically can't be restricted (a machete can be improvised much more easily than a repeating firearm or ammunition for said firearm).
We agree that both machetes and guns are dangerous. But I'm arguing that a machete can be more dangerous than a handgun, in the hands of a trained attacker.
I was quibbling with the "physically work quite a bit" aspect of your comment.
The gun has exactly one business end and you know how it is going to be used. An attacker wielding a knife can use multitude of moves, how to attack.
It seems to have taken to ~1850 for practical military repeating rifles.
edit: Your comment is still young, but I'll note for history that I replied with the wiki link before you had added it to your comment.
Without meaning to be glib, this is exactly the reason I would not recommend a machete to my grandmother for personal defense, but I would recommend her a Ruger LCR, or a Smith & Wesson M&P.
The fact that she is physically disadvantaged against almost anyone would do her harm is a use case that the firearm solves quite nicely.
Undermining your grandmother's ability to defend herself is worth it if the policy that does so statistically reduces violence (or even statistically reduces the consequences of violence).
I'm certainly not expecting any of my comments here to persuade someone who cherishes their gun rights.
But I don't believe that such people come anywhere near representing a majority, so I still see value in staking out a clear position.
But, if you were just blasting an opinion out there rather than attempting to have a discussion - why are you here again? - fine. Can't argue with an opinion, even if it comes off as completely insensitive and tone-deaf.
People project their gun attitudes onto their grandma's that have never been attacked anyway and demand that we live in a less safe society because of it.
My mom was pretty unnerved when her house got broken into (she was there, asleep, didn't wake up, wasn't attacked). She wouldn't be any better off with a gun because she isn't prepared to use it. Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win for her.
So do I lack perspective? Or have I maybe come to different, reasonable conclusions and am sick of people making absurd emotional arguments about how guns make people safer?
"Effective restrictions on guns" don't exist in the same way that "effective restrictions on drugs" don't exist.
So no, your conclusion is not "reasonable". It is completely unrealistic and runs contrary to the most basic laws, not to mention the culture of the country.
I'm much more interested in realistic solutions that don't involve trampling on basic rights and removing the ability of people to defend themselves from an assailant. If you expect such discussion to be not emotionally loaded, your conclusion is unrealistic twice over.
And it isn't that I expect such a discussion to not be emotionally loaded, I'm just going to reject assertions that only one sort of emotional loading is warranted.
I agree it will take a long time to impose effective restrictions on guns in the US, we should get started as soon as possible. I think looking at Britain and Australia make it clear enough that gun restrictions do make a difference (even if their more generous social welfare systems tend to lead to lower general levels of criminal violence to begin with).
Ignore the fact that we see this on two different levels and don't even agree on first principles for a moment. Let's just talk about the pure practicality and rhetoric involved.
From a purely objective standpoint, a great many people in this country believe in the 2nd amendment as written.
There is no legislative solution that doesn't involve their consent. As much as you'd like to drag them over kicking and screaming, you can't. Our legislative system has safeguards in mind to prevent minority opinions from being imposed on the rest of the country. You're talking a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, or a constitutional convention involving 2/3 of states, to amend the constitution.
Please realize this. It's important. There's your goal which even I can agree is admirable, and then there's talk of realistic ways of achieving it, which is a much more interesting conversation, and one you sadly don't seem to want to have.
So that said - why the tone-deaf posturing? Do your comments here advance your goal of reducing gun violence in any way?
Or rather, do they confirm every stereotype of anti-gun people ever cooked up?
Do you realize your earlier conversation could be run verbatim by the freakin' NRA as an example of what they fight against, generating more support for the exact opposite of what you hope to accomplish?
The way I see it, step one is getting to a place where emotional appeals about grandma needing a force equalizer are dismissed more quickly than points about statistics showing that guns overall enhance violence. So experimental comments that turn some people off? Meh.
My grandfather, father, mother, and myself have all used a handgun in self defense before. I would posit that I am existing to type this because of personal firearm ownership. Whenever I see comments like yours I empathize and remind myself that you are good natured but that you lack the background and context to realize why someone might reasonably want or need to arm themselves. Most of my friends here in California are like that, and they have no idea how nice and safe their environment and upbringing was in the pricy coastal cities and university towns of the West Coast. Some of us are from rougher places. Having lived in many different environments with different threat levels I understand the genesis of both viewpoints, but I know which one I'd consider right.
Our criminal neighbor tried to bash my father's head in with a tire iron on the front lawn - before you counter that we wouldn't need firearms to defend ourselves with if there weren't firearms out there in the first place.
Somehow I haven't been in any situations where a gun seemed like it would have helped (and there aren't such stories flying around my extended family either).
My approaching-70 year old father will be retiring to the middle of nowhere, along with his wife. What's he going to do if someone breaks in - fight them? He's an old man with COPD. Call the police? They're an hour away. But with a good dog to alert him to intruders, and a good gun he can reach for? He can protect himself against anyone, no matter how much of a physical advantage they might have.
As for 'highly dangerous concealed weapons' - you were probably more likely to encounter this on a day-to-day basis at the time of the constitution being written than even in the most heavily gunned state with low-barrier carry laws.
If you are updating constructions, this also means that the context is important; in the constitutional times people were responsible for defending themselves primarily - if that assumption can/should/has been changed, where then is that change legally codified?
In my experience it's been the other way around. I'm a gun owner and gun control advocate; a seemingly impossible combination in the eyes of most gun rights advocates.
When I've said to other gun owners in the past that common sense regulations make sense, not only have I been told that opinion means I don't deserve the guns I legally own now, it also means that if I were in danger and a gun owner was around who could stop it they should let me die because I'm not on really on their side.
That's right -- gun owners should not help me in a life or death situation because I think there should be some limits to gun ownership, despite being an owner myself who would also be subject to those limitations.
See, and like that you've lost me. That's exactly the sort of politicized weasel-wording that has been used repeatedly to pick away at gun owners.
State what precise regulations you mean, and then we can have a productive discussion.
Think for a second about why you chose those words instead of simply asking, "what do you consider to be 'common sense regulations'?" Are you subconsciously (or perhaps intentionally) trying to antagonize me by being pre-emptively dismissive of whatever I have to say next? That's usually the case in these discussions, in my experience, and if so, there's no point in continuing at all, because you've already made up your mind to disagree with whatever I have to say.
But in case I'm reading too far into that remark, I will share what I consider to be "common sense regulations":
I think a permitting process should be required for all gun ownership that involves a thorough background investigation. That's for all firearms -- long guns, pistols, all of them. You should need to present this permit when making all further firearm and ammunition transactions, including private party transfer and at gun shows.
Usually the immediate rebuttal to this is "well the Constitution says I have a right to guns!" Setting aside the semantics of the second amendment and our interpretation of what the authors meant by it, the end result of this proposed permitting process is not actually much different from the way things are setup today. Currently if you're a convicted felon you can't own a gun. The only difference is that for things like rifles and shotguns, law enforcement today doesn't know you own one since there is no permitting or registration process. The only difference is that instead of taking away the gun when you're a felon caught with one, you just aren't able to get it in the first place.
The next rebuttal is that now the government has a list of gun owners with this system that they'll use for whatever nefarious purposes you can imagine, but you're a fool if you think they don't already have this information. Your identity is sent to NICS currently when you buy a gun, and there's no way they aren't logging this information already. The only difference under my plan is that this registration would be more transparent, and you get an ID card proving you're fit to own a firearm.
And hell, we're all tech minded people here. There's no reason why this whole system can't anonymized in a blockchain or something like that.
Private party transfer and gun shows would be a bit trickier to regulate, but if the plan is universal among all states, then you can simply say that if you are the registered owner of a gun and it's used in a crime, even if you didn't fire the gun, unless you processed the transfer you're personally liable.
And really, that's all I mean by "common sense regulations". As I said, I'm a gun owner and I would be happy to live with this system. That is, knowing that everyone else is subject to it as well. The problem is that such a plan would need to be instituted nationwide, otherwise it's pointless since you can just drive to another state and bypass the whole thing. In the minds of most gun control advocates registration = loss of freedom, as opposed to the minor inconvenience it would be for law abiding citizens, so I doubt it would ever be possible.
Now, to tackle them in reverse order:
> as opposed to the minor inconvenience it would be for law abiding citizens, so I doubt it would ever be possible.
There is no concrete benefit for law-abiding citizens above the system we already have in place here. Like, it's not immediately obvious that the proposed changes clearly make things better (unlike, say, requiring seatbelts in cars).
> you can simply say that if you are the registered owner of a gun and it's used in a crime, even if you didn't fire the gun, unless you processed the transfer you're personally liable.
This fails (badly) to account for firearms that have been stolen. See also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/27/new-e...
If you want to make the argument that "gun owners need to keep better track of their guns"...it's their property, so that should be their choice. We don't require people to know exactly where their car is, or to know where their bicycle is, or where their axes are (even though all of those could and are used to wound others).
> Private party transfer and gun shows would be a bit trickier to regulate
Again, it's unclear that there is good reason or precedent for regulating the transfer of property here.
> you're a fool if you think they don't already have this information.
One could make the same argument about requiring people to cc the NSA on every email they make to people outside the continental US: just because it's happening doesn't mean we should set legislative precedent.
> Currently if you're a convicted felon you can't own a gun.
There has been a lot of work in the last few years to try and restore that right, actually. This makes sense given the arbitrary enforcement of non-violent felonies.
It's hardly assumed that felons (given our current judicial system) have any moral obligation to be unarmed.
> You should need to present this permit when making all further firearm and ammunition transactions, including private party transfer and at gun shows.
Why, exactly? What is the purpose of this?
What benefit or supposed safety do we get from having this?
And if the benefits are so great, shouldn't we just make this near-mandatory training during schooling, as we do with driving?
Comeon that's a terrible false equivalence and I am sure you know it. I can possibly use just a blunt pencil to kill someone, but a gun makes it orders of magnitude easier (even if the intent was not to kill).
If false equivalence are acceptable, let me throw you another one. Why throw hissy fits about nations that have or are building nuclear arms capability. As a third party it is legit to feel unsafe unless you have skin in the game, unless you have demonstrated to some satisfaction that you can handle the capability responsibly. But NPTs are no way as nuanced as that, even hypothetical capability is enough to legitimize a hissy fit and worse: crippling sanctions.
I think its fair trade, if you are not willing to take liability of not being able to secure your gun, you don't get to keep it. If it gets stolen etc, its fine if you alert law enforcement within an actionable window. If something bad is done with your gun you have to convince a judge that you took all reasonable precautions.
I'm Czech ("the Texas of EU", with ~3% of population having a carry permit) and finally a gun owner after EU's decisively not common-sense latest round of gun control regulations (proving, by the way, the fear of ever-sliding next round "compromise", to be a very real one).
I have mixed feelings about such registries.
On one hand, that's what we have here, and it works reasonably well - and gun owners are mostly content with well-balanced legislation that is neither too permissive nor too restrictive.
On the other hand, the risk of such registries is not theoretical for Czechs. In 1939, when Germany invaded [what remained of] the country, one of the first things they did was to confiscate all legally owned weapons — which was only made possible by the registry, and significantly impaired armed resistance. Lesson learned, and practiced decades after the war ended: hidden illegal arms are better than legal ones.
By the way, on the subject of the rest of your comment: everybody needs a permit here and we're fine with the system. Unlike in most of the rest of the EU, you have a legal right for a conceal carry permit, provided that you meet the legal requirements that I think amount to a background check in US: no recent (or, if serious, ever) crime record, no recent relevant misdemeanor (basically DUI or getting into fights, i.e. just the kind of irresponsible person you don't want to have a gun), no relevant medical problems (basically impairing judgment or motor skills). And you have to pass an exam, akin to driver's license, that tests for your knowledge of the law and practical ability to safely handle firearms and hit a target.
You need a permit for every gun too, with paperwork involved in any sort of sale, but the permit is automatic, just bureaucracy (except for firearms with restricted sale in EU, most notably full-auto; the you need to demonstrate a need and may or may not be granted a permit).
By the way, this is the story of every regulated industry as it starts to fall under the specter of regulation. Everyone says "Who are you to tell me what I can do? Where will it end?" The answer is that laws will stop changing when public opinion stops changing.
I'm sure that those getting rich at the teat of Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al were none too pleased about increasing antitrust regulation in their era. It went against everything they had built their empires upon. That's too bad. It had to be done to address an urgent threat to American way of life. Gun control advocates see mass shootings in the news and see such a threat.
To many of us, that's akin to suggesting that freedom of speech should be curtailed if public sentiment is against it.
We really do see arms as a basic human right, right up there with speech and religion and assembly.
So now it's chicken-and-egg. Is the ACLU better than the NRA, but uninterested? Or are their different tactics and results a product of the different topics they deal with?
edit: as an aside, I'm big on the second amendment but stopped contributing to the NRA precisely because, among other things, they're clearly not big fans of other civil liberties. Their magazines contain (or used to, anyway) a lot of bias against anyone who didn't support a heavily militarized police force, or was against torture for suspected terrorists, etc. It also wasn't clear to me how all the money they solicited was being tracked for efficacy.
The ACLU has a great record on 1 and 4, as do several of the groups they work with. "Restore the Fourth" is fantastic, and you can guess which amendment they care about.
The NRA is strange and uncomfortable to a lot of people, I think. I share your complaint, but they have strong stances on so many different issues that I've met people who object to them for half a dozen different reasons.
When this country was founded, there were no police. Our adversarial justice system was you deciding you were wronged, going and swearing out a warrant in front of a magistrate, and then executing said warrant with the aid of whatever bruisers you could muster. Generally clubs would be preferable to pistols, and there was no chance of using a musket. Also, while there was not an explicit prohibition on maintaining a standing army, the time limit on military appropriations was intended to limit military spending to war-time.
To some degree this changed in 1812, when the far-more-numerous American militia failed to contest the burning of the nation's capital. To some degree it changed in 1847 when Samuel Colt became a successful revolver manufacturer. But to whatever degree this nation has changed its ideas about firearms, these have not been reflected in law, and we've been papering over the situation for the last century at least.
Where the NRA fits into this is to demand protection and expansion of the individual right to bear arms without any consideration whatsoever of the original context of the second amendment. I don't necessarily object to their viewpoint, but their myopia on the subject does make it rather difficult to discuss. Generally I think the way this goes is, ["Founder's intentions", "individual right to bear arms", "standing army"] : pick any two.
"In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia. The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. However, particular federal or state laws on licensing, registration, prohibition, or other regulation of the manufacture, shipment, sale, purchase or possession of guns may raise civil liberties questions."
In practice, they don't advocate for Second Amendment protection. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it would destroy their effectiveness elsewhere without achieving much, but their acknowledgement of the right hasn't involved them actually getting involved with legal cases so far.
I think the ACLU does a great job, but they aren't as effective as the NRA.
This in and of itself is not a sufficient reason not to pass a particular piece of regulation.
In the last 2-3 generations, the US has experienced a pretty huge shift from rural to urban. The difference in life experience between those two environments is pretty stark.
Someone whose family has always (let's say 2-3 generations) lived in, say, rural or suburban Mississippi is going to have exposure to and basic knowledge of firearms. Someone whose family has always lived in LA, or New York, or Chicago, probably won't.
As with many things, group A has little interest in the lives of group B, and vice versa, and so you get enormous gulfs of understanding. Firearms isn't the only one.