The President's Plan to Reduce Gun Violence
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I actually think this is a brilliant plan by President Obama. Push a bunch of things (some of which no reasonable person could oppose, like the efficiency improvements in the EOs), and some things which the Republicans in the House will probably not let get out of committee or to a vote on the floor (AWB and magazine capacity limits).
That way, the President gets to accomplish some things (and some of those things which have costs are things a lot of gun owners, myself included, support -- 100% NCIC checks on all transfers). The Republicans who block AWB get painted as obstructionists for blocking part of that, which hurts them from the center/left. Some Tea Party/etc. people push even wackier candidates in 2014 if the Republicans compromise on any issues at all, thus helping the Democrats in 2014, too.
Incidentally, I was surprised to be reminded by the President's speech that the BATF hasn't had a full-time director the last 6 years.
1. http://cdn03.cdnwp.thefrisky.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/...
Mag limits are less likely than AP ammo. I honestly have no idea how likely or not they are to pass. I'm pretty well hedged :)
AWB seems hopeless, both because it's clearly cosmetic and ineffectual and because it would have a higher cost to implement.
Also, I agree the long-term trend is anti-firearms, mainly due to immigration and urbanization. However, the trend within firearms is from shotgun/lever/revolver toward "America's Rifle" (AR-15), military style accessories, tactical training, etc.
I also think if you took a direct 100% popular vote right now (or especially the day after Sandy Hook), 50+% of people would vote for banning all guns. A majority of people would also support confiscating the assets of the richest 1%, etc., though.
What a relief that nobody is talking about either banning all guns or confiscating assets.
Not noticed by many outside the community is that most handguns for self-defense, and many if not most that are used for concealed carry, have standard magazine capacities of > 10 rounds (and almost all > 7 rounds).
De jure or de facto shall issue concealed carry regimes are now in place in 42 states, and scholar Clayton Cramer and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) independently estimated this summer that there are between 7.5 and 8 million licenses outstanding (and more every day, especially as the US population ages). Screwing with these people, who tend to vote (older demographic, after all) ... is not wise. Just threatening them, as is being done now, will have costs in the coming elections.
And that's exactly what happened in the 1994-2004 period; there were plenty of standard capacity magazines for existing designs, but they got a lot more expensive and there was always the concern you might eventually use up all the ones you could procure. And for new designs....
Well, .45 ACP indeed became a lot more popular; if you're limited to 10+1 rounds or less you'd better make every one count. And M1911s ... well, everyone makes them nowadays. Even Remington returned to the handgun market with one. Despite thinking it's the best design---and certainly they don't fit everyone's hands, like the Glock doesn't for me---I'm just amazed. Of course, the design is long past patent protection, I'm sure someone has a affordable CNC package for them, and then it's just normal fitting. But, still.
And it's a century year old design!
An early-to-mid-20th century American soldier (US has always emphasized pistols as actual combat weapons more than other countries[1]) or a modern shooting sports enthusiast has the time and skill to clean one periodically (as to keep it in working state) and perform adjustments to prevent jams.
It's not reasonable to expect this of someone with no previous experience of firearms, but looking to protect themselves after receiving a death threat or seeing too many home invasions in their neighborhood. Doubly so if it's a Kimber or other model made to far tighter tolerance than was possible or intended in 1911.
These laws tend to benefit hunters, hobbyists, and target shooters like myself (who prefer muzzle brakes to flash hiders, match-grade full-length barrels to tactical coolness, etc...), but hurt people who want to use these weapons for self-defense.
[1] First trophy my grandfather (artillery captain in Soviet military) took during World War II was a Walther PPK in .32 ACP. Not ideal for defense, but far cry from a Nagant or a Tokarev TT (based on the 1911, but unsafe for carrying with the hammer cocked). Never heard of an American officer trading his 1911 for a Walther/Nambu/Luger/etc...
Don't buy a target gun, buy one specifically made to looser tolerances for self-defense. The design is very forgiving after all, it was for the field and back in a period when ammo was often marginal (hence its grossly overpowered mainspring, Mauser style positive feed and claw extractor, etc.).
I've never had to adjust any of mine to prevent jams or other problems once I got past one obnoxious one of my Kimber Pro-Carry flinging its brass into my face (slow and careful filing of the ejector fixed that). They can also get pretty dirty without needing cleaning. But, they are self-defense models, not target ones, they aren't super tight, although they're more accurate than I am with a handgun.
As for your other suggestions: moving can be a good idea but you might stil be tracked down, a dog can be killed (it was recently joked that the police could solve their ammo shortages if they just stopped shooting dogs), a shotgun is a really, really bad idea for weapons retention. Someone can grab it outside of your grip and rip it out of your hands, as I demonstrated to a nephew who's bigger and fitter than me. If a M1911 is too advanced for someone to learn I do recommend an external hammer DAO design (since carrying is a consideration striker fired guns are right out due to the holstering accidental discharge problem (not being able to detect that until it fires)).
And following the church of Martin Fackler, I recommend going for the biggest diameter that works for the person, i.e. .45 ACP > .40 S&W > 9 mm.
I don't, however, think that a normal Stainless Kimber is better (tolerance-wise) than the Target model. The only distinction (afaik) are the adjustable sights (which are actually amazingly sturdy for adjustable sights, to my surprised). You clear know more self-defense than I do -- so I'll defer to you (especially re: shotguns, etc...)
Re: other suggestions--
I was not covering the "I have a determined nutcase after me" scenario, I was covering the "increase in violent crime" (armed robbery, home invasions, etc...) scenario. I've had these questions recently because (for many reasons) San Jose has had a drastic increase in crime: moving to Saratoga/Cupertino/good part of Sunnyvale or to Fremont seems like a good long term strategy anyway.
To clarify re: dog, I wasn't suggesting having the dog attack the assailant, but more in the sense of having a dog wake me (and the immediate neighbors) up if a stranger is around at night.
Of course this is not a very reliable strategy, being in a safe neighborhood (with trustworthy neighbors), and having a firearm are far more important. However, it's useful: an alarm system only works if it's tripped, but a dog can smell from a distance. So far, the only times my dog has waken me up at night, was literally when there was a stranger directly in front of the downstairs living room windows.
Not in any way perfect, but sufficient to alert the neighbors, scare away a robber that has purely financial motivation, let me call the police, etc... before they attempt to break in (best confrontation is one that never has to happen).
I agree that the trend of police shooting family dogs is absolutely disgusting, but so is the trend of paramilitary police raiding family homes on shoddy evidence.
My favorite guns are Sig SAOs -- I've got a few X-Fives, and P220 SAOs, and a fair number of DA/SA and a couple DAK too. Really tempted by the new P226 SAO which came out yesterday -- I'd love a P229 SAO though, or an "X-Three" or something. Also really like CZ -- I started out carrying a Browning Hi-Power in Iraq (along with an AK), and then moved my way up to a CZ-97b once I had a reliable source of .45acp FMJ ammo. The only 1911s I have are Dan Wesson (awesome) and Taurus (no idea why I bought them except that they were $399 and I was stupid). I'd like to get a Wilson or Les Baer and some of the new Sig, Ruger, and S&W 1911s.
For a competition, I'd take tested/tuned P220 SAO or X-Five, but if I had to grab something out of the factory box and rely on it for 6 months with no prior testing, it would be a Glock 19 (or maybe a Glock 21 if FMJ-only, but I really prefer the 19). Similarly, if I had to hand a handgun to someone with minimal training, it would be a Glock (or a revolver -- love the 627 PC "8 times")
The nice thing about .45 ACP is that you aren't betting much on it expanding, and if it does, all things equal, if you follow Fackler, it'll be better than a similarly expanding 9 mm.
No argument with Gold Dot, that's what I use in .45 ACP. For me the question of "which gun" was settled by the ergonomics of the M1911 in my hand, obviously YMMV.
As a dude with small hands, I will write a personal letter of thanks to Andrew Cuomo if this happens: a modern polymer single-stack 9mm from a reputable manufacturer is long overdue.
I get the impression they're good, but I myself can't get past the "no external hammer" for preventing accidental discharges when holstering.
The big problem for common weapons like the AR-15 using STANAG 20/30rd magazines is "real" USGI aluminum magazines are still widely available, and cost about $8/ea usually (they just spiked, but a lot of people have tens or hundreds already). The best magazines, Magpul's PMags, are $125 for $10. By the time you 3d print, add springs, etc., it's not worth it.
There's not a whole lot of stress on a magazine (certainly compared to a barrel), but they are subjected to wear, and need to smoothly insert. There are some highly dimensionally sensitive areas as well as flexibility sensitive parts (feed lips) which also change with time. Even the stainless steel magazines basically suck by comparison to Magpul or USGI aluminum, and the Thermold plastic magazines are also lame. The only polymer mags other than pmags that I don't hate are the Lancers.
There probably would be a market in custom or semi-custom manufacture of magazines for more obscure guns, though. Or, if 10rd magazines were completely banned too, and somehow the huge supply of 10-30rd magazines were confiscated.
Sexism aside (since it's hardly specific to gun culture), that actually seems like pretty sincere marketing for something whose main real selling point is that it makes a very loud noise.
Most of the criticism I hear about "assault weapon" bans, aside from the standard criticism of gun laws in general, are that the things used to define "assault weapon" are largely irrelevant to functionality and that the definition amounts to "guns that look frightening".
It seems to me this is a valid criticism that should be taken seriously by both sides of the aisle.
It's mostly to allow issuing one variety of weapon that will fit anybody, and fit when wearing serious body armor or not.
I'm told AR-15 pattern rifles rule in 3 gun competitions (pistol, shotgun, and rifle/carbine) because of the weight distribution, which of course also is a virtue in close quarters combat/battle (CQB).
I can't remember this feature in any other designs, but there are very possibly some ones that I'm not interested in and haven't learned the details of. Almost every other design puts a piston forward, which naturally incorporates the recoil spring. There's also the roller locking recoil designs, the ones that I'm familiar with (G3/HK 91, StG 57) have their piston forward as well, although that's not strictly required by the mechanism.
Or "A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm". Is that to ban guns that are easily modified I guess? Is that necessarily an easy thing to do? Seems you could be more to the point and ban guns that can trivially be modified in such a way.
General (bolt, rimfire of all types, shotguns, probably lever -- and suppressors)
High rate of fire (semiautomatic, particularly semi with detachable magazine -- semi with 5-10rd integral magazine might be general or general+). Fully automatic or burst might be considered HRF+. (there is honestly not a huge difference in performance in most plausible civilian shooting scenarios between a semiautomatic rifle and a fully automatic rifle. Outside suppression for movement, I've never wanted fully auto, including when the weapon I had was fully auto -- except for fun, or if it was mounted on a vehicle). This should include both imported auto and post-1986 auto. 922(r) should also be removed.
Concealable (centerfire handgun, SBR, SBS, AOW)
Have a licensing scheme for purchase and possession, but not registry of individual weapons within that class. If you have a HRF license you can buy any number of HRF or General or General+ all at the same time without reporting anything other than "HRF or lower" during the purchase. It's unclear how HRF and Concealable interact (maybe revolvers or fixed-small-magazines only if you only have a concealable license).
It's unclear what level of training, background checks, etc. would be needed for each. I'd be inclined to raise the purchase/possession requirements for handguns and HRF weapons to the same as concealed carry permits are today in many states, with an actual course of fire, 1-2 days of training, etc., but there would need to be a requirement that such training be reasonably accessible and straightforward.
It's acceptable to me if it takes 3-6 months and ~$500 to get a license to purchase HRF weapons and concealable weapons, provided basic rimfire weapons, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles are available with essentially an NCIC and <$25 fee on top of sale price.
That all seems very reasonable to me.. which sadly probably means it will never happen.
I wouldn't care nearly as much about Obama's background check talk if we just exempted anyone with a state-issued CHL license. Maybe add a new class of license, which is optional: run the background check once + training + pay $200, receive a "here's your buy a gun card", or you can just run the background check every time like we do now.
I don't mind that the government does a sanity check on whether a given citizen should own a gun; but if they've decided I'm responsible enough to own a gun I don't really think it's any of their business if I own 2 guns or 12, any more than it's any of their business knowing I own a MacBook, read /. over morning coffee, or bought Star Wars on blu-ray from Amazon 3 weeks ago.
Just like we have state-issued licenses for driving cars, but we don't run federal background checks every time I go test-drive a new ride at the Chevy dealership.
It's trivial to run a SQL query to the effect of "how many times did citizen #12784728 request a background check and when", so if you hear somebody complaining about background checks in the coming weeks, it's probably not because they think crazy people should buy guns, it's because they just want the government to leave them the hell alone.
If it's not an online check, it at least should be easy for the FFL or private party individual (with direct sales) to know with high certainty that the person is the correct person matched to the credential, and to know that the credential hasn't been revoked in a certain window of time (daily CRL or something).
I'd have more faith in private industry putting something like this together than government developing it internally or contracting development out.
How about in the context of having recovered a gun from a crime, and wanting to trace it to the supplier? My understanding is that most illegal guns were first purchased legally.
I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns.
You'd have to be able to stamp the secret at purchase time in the presence of the buyer, which is both doable, and works retroactively on guns manufactured prior to the legislation.
> I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns.
Exactly. Well put.
Most traces dead end at the point the gun was stolen, the whole registration and trace thing is pretty much never useful in solving a crime.
Now there is some merit in discouraging straw purchases, which are a more than tiny but not "large" source of guns used in crimes, but that's not likely to prevent many criminals from procuring weapons, which in theory is what we're most interested in.
Whereas gun confiscations are always preceded by registration unless they're done during a revolution, so there's a lot of resistance to anything that smacks of registration.
I.e. I think its a mistake to say "if we can stop this source we'll stop them from getting them altogether". Great Britain, which has the great advantage of being an island, doesn't provide a encouraging example after their total bans.
Part of the point of a progressive licensing system (which I think we should also have for cars, and if we legalize vs. decriminalize drugs, for drugs), is that you can get into the early levels first, build up experience, and then go for the more advanced stuff. It's undeniable that guns have safety-to-others implications, like cars, unlike things like video games, books, etc., so there's a compelling case to regulate them.
I think there are also cases of imminent threat where someone has a reasonable home defense argument for a gun, and allowing a 12ga or 20ga shotgun purchase by any 18+ non-felon fairly quickly solves that. People can disagree about whether CCW or home ownership of guns help or hurt, but it's pretty clear that home defense is a stronger case than concealed carry on the street. If you're unskilled, a home defense shotgun is a great choice; I could probably teach someone with zero familiarity with guns to become a credible home defense gun owner with a shotgun (including legal concepts, etc.) in 15 minutes on a range and an hour or two in a classroom. Couldn't do that in less than 2-3 days with a handgun for street carry from the same starting point.
Most CCW holders shouldn't even be moving around with a handgun (which is generally much easier for weapon retention) in a home defense environment. That's more like 3-4 days of range time and 2 days of classroom.
And WRT to the latter, while of course no one is recommending they clear a building with any weapon, if they have to rescue a child, if there are multiple intruders, if they'd like to make a phone call (e.g. 911) while having the weapon fully ready, there are power/flash and sound issues, over/vs. under-penetration (OK, there are no great solutions there) ... I think shotguns are a terrible idea. Not my insight BTW, picked it up from Massad Ayoob in his The Truth About Self-Protection.
Hell, that describes many of the vocal gun owners I know too.
Probably the case for pistols, but a rarity for shotguns. Likely split evenly between semi-auto, bolt, and lever-action for rifles, but definitely trending to semi-auto as plurality (if already not the case).
Look at the old Federal Assault Weapons Ban and it should become pretty apparent what I mean.
(PS: you can use italics like this:
*foo bar baz*
)(2) This is something.
(3) We should do this.
Using that logic could lead you could justify almost anything. There are literally thousands of things we could ban that would certainly save at least one child's life.
If he seemed to be actually applying that standard, I'd worry. Otherwise it just seems like he cares a lot about children, which, man, I just can't be mad at someone for that.
Someone as intelligent as the president would never say this on Hacker News, no. Someone was intelligent as a president looking to get anywhere in politics, would.
Sad, but there's one solution: actively support the rights of people you otherwise disagree with. The right-wing backlash in ~2001-2004 was immense and "justified" with statements "well, you guys didn't speak up after Ruby Ridge[1], so why should we speak up for you?"
In ~12/14-12/16, my Twitter stream was full of variation of "you right-wing nuts did not support 4th amendment rights after 9/11, why should we support 2nd amendment today?"
Reminder: "eye for an eye" leads "we're all blind!" more often than "people we don't like have one eye punched out too!".
[1] "I don't think it's fair to entrap someone in order to make them spy on a neo-Nazi organization, then lay siege and kill their wife if they don't" does not equate to "I support their black helicopter conspiracy theory views".
Gun violence is a complex problem with many variables and to really fix it would require a lot of research and carefully structured legislation. Much of it probably wouldn't work the first time either, so there would have to be some experimentation. That's not appealing to most politicians.
Josh Sugarmann, who seems to be the brain trust for the gun grabbers, had already worked up a campaign against civilian semi-auto assault rifles, based on their "scary" looks and deliberate conflation of them and real military selective fire assault rifles ("machine guns", although often it's just a 3 round burst for better control). And then the Stockton schoolyard massacre happened (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_School_massacre) and off they went.
(A couple of notes on things you won't get from that article: Purdy was able to legally buy his weapons with his SSI money because his crimes had always been plead down to misdemeanors; I'm also pretty sure he never passed the 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) criteria for a mental disbarment, so even if the NICS had existed then it wouldn't have stopped him.
Great emphasis is placed on these weapons being "high powered" ... which by definition they are not. And being based on military designs the cheapest ammo is FMJ, which is also the least wounding (Hague Convention requirement to make war more "humane"). According to Martin Fackler this resulted in ER doctors excessively debreiding wounds from them, resulting in greater morbidity and mortality under the real word got out.
I mention that because a lot of these efforts have very nasty unintended consequences, e.g. the whole "cop killer bullet" campaign about bullets that were never for sale to civilians did result in one thing: teaching a lot of criminals that a lot of cops wear concealable body armor....)
Anyway, you're right: if you really want to save lives, and/or want to minimize damage to your political side/party/whatever, it's a terrible approach. Cost the Democrats the Congress in 1994, according to no less a political genius than Bill Clinton.
Why does it keep coming back? I suppose it's viewed as low hanging fruit, easy to propagandize, and while you may "generally support gun control", a lot of gun grabbers are quite explicit about wanting to ban all guns and will take anything they can get (note, for example, how few of the current proposals would even in theory have changed the Newtown, Connecticut outcome; I mean, the police took at least 14 minutes to arrive after the first 911 call). So, again, a target of opportunity; rational policy by anyone's lights is simply not relevant.
Those are very common and accurate words of art in the RKBA community; one of my objectives in writing mini-essays like the above is to expose others to our viewpoint and that includes the language we use.
All I see are people proposing regulations for the manufacture and sale of particular kinds of dangerous weapons. Nobody that I know of is trying to "grab" guns from people who obtained them legally. As far as I know, that has never happened in US history.
What do you think happened when Tammany Hall gangster (in this case I'm not repeating myself) Timothy Sullivan got New York's first gun control law passed in 1911, requiring a permit to even own a handgun? What do you think happened to the newer immigrants against who this was enforced?
I mean, it takes some serious effort to, per Gawker's list of from a couple of years ago, issue only 21,100 handgun possession permits for 8 million people. And what about Heller and MacDonald? Both D.C. and Chicago froze handgun possession after registering them, and the latter also required periodic re-registration (well, expect for that one time an Alderman forgot to do it).
Complete or nearly so bans on possession may not fit the precise meaning of "grabbing", but I think they're close enough.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
And were those NYC non-Irish owned than therefore banned handguns "grabbed" or not? The SKS situation: well, you could sell your's or move it out of state, but if you didn't they were subject to being "grabbed" along with you for a nice prison term.
Seems a little hypocritical to demand precision from one side and embrace fluidity of the language on the other.
We do this because it's 100% a political and legal term, and of course propaganda. One good definition coming from a politician's mouth would be "any scary looking gun I think I can get banned". If you expect the gun owning community to embrace it, well, you're already disappointed. And by definition it can't be a precise term, unless we're talking about "an assault weapon as defined by [this specific law]."
We talk about "assault rifles", but even then there's a lack of precision. The original Nazi StG 44 is one, but the Swiss StG 57 is a battle rifle, in fact, it's so heavy at 12.5 pounds that with its standard 24 round magazine it's just about a machine rifle. StG is for Sturmgewehr, literally storm rifle in German.
There's also a lack of precision in that many, including myself, call semi-auto versions of them assault rifles, even though by the strict definition they can't be since one of the points of using an intermediate power round is to allow (more) controllable full auto firing, military ones are "selective fire" (although there's a common trend to max that out at 3 round bursts for greater control and conserving ammo).
The extremes in the gun community for naming them run from the NSSF's "modern sporting rifle" (they're the lobbying etc. group for manufacturers, distributors, retailers and range operators) to just recently, when Obama's threatened executive actions were unspecified, "Regime Change Rifles" from about the most rabid without being bat-shit crazy* of the "3 percenters".
* I.e. about as rabid as RMS but less "crazy".
I feel like I've learned a lot from your contributions here.
You're conflating "this will never happen" with "there aren't people who want this to happen".
Calling every single ATF employee a "jack booted Nazi thug" is indeed unfair, wrong, and incendiary. Calling someone who wants to confiscate guns "a gun grabber" is not.
The problem is that platform being advanced by Obama and Biden has been authored well ahead of time by gun control organizations. Before you call me a conspiracy theorist, I'll state that this is not a conspiracy if they're out working in the open about it; nor is it wrong for a President to call interest groups for policy advice. The real problem is that these interest groups are actively advancing an agenda that goes far beyond "Assault Weapons" or what most Americans would be comfortable with.
These organizations don't say "we will go out and confiscate most guns", they say "let's ban dangerous weapons and have mandatory buybacks", but then "British National Party" doesn't call themselves "National Socialist British Worker's Party" (ditto for "Golden Dawn" in Greece, etc..)
tl;dr It's right to call this a gun-grabbing agenda, even if the Obama had campaigned on the premise of "I won't take your guns" and said that he thinks that "second amendment recognizes an individual right".
That was one massive investment by the Joyce Foundation that went spectacularly bad....
Reactions to bringing up any opposition to this most elsewhere was a fusillade of vitriol.
And he had quite an anti-gun record before the campaign; e.g. being a Joyce Foundation board member is about as hard core as you can get. From what I learned, hard stuff vs. what is claimed he said while at the University of Chicago Law School, I believe he would actually like to confiscate all civilian firearms.
But he's not like Clinton, he's not a cultural Baby Boomer, he's actually from Generation Jones like myself. So the culture wars that have consumed the US since the '60s aren't, I believe, a big driver for him, just something he'll use.
However, bottom line, if he wants to ban commonly used guns, which "assault weapons" most certainly are, e.g. per Dianne Feinstein prevent transfer so they must be surrendered upon death (and she's quite clear about desiring total confiscations), I can't see how "gun grabber" is seriously incorrect.
Also, I've been hearing about Obama's secret desire to confiscate guns for years. Do you have anything stronger than third-hand hearsay to back this up? (Honest question, no snark intended.)
But you really should look into the Joyce Foundation some more, they massively funded an effort to provide a legal foundation for the "collective right" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment; as I note here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070792 that investment was a total loss, 9 out of 9 Supremes said individual right.
And while one might not be "in lock-step with that group or its members on every issue" it makes a statement when you take the highest position after Chairman of the Board in the nation's premier anti-gun funding foundation. And as a board member you're responsible for the oversight of donations, the foundation's spending strategy, it's hard to see how he could have been in that position without agreeing with e.g. it's position of nullifying the 2nd Amendment.
Would you be as sanguine if he'd been a board member of the Pioneer Fund (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund)? I met its future head Philippe Rushton when he first presented his work at a late 80's AAAS annual meeting, he appeared to be an honest albeit naive scientist, he didn't expect the firestorm that his research resulted in (roughly quoting: "for every criteria I can find, blacks and Orientals plot at the extremes with whites in the middle"). (I myself have no informed opinion on these topics, ask me about chemistry, guns, computers, etc., but not that.)
> now we have his actions as a President to judge
Again, so far these actions are nothing more than mainstream liberal boilerplate about background checks, "assault rifles", "cop-killer bullets", etc. While this could be the first salvo in an attempt to undo the 2nd Amendment entirely, it doesn't meet my burden of proof. It feels up there with Naomi Wolf's "You just wait, Cheney's gonna declare martial law any day now!" in 2007.
There are also serious implications to his claim of executive privilege in the DoJ's denying the Congress documents on Fast and Furious. Either that operation reached into his staff, or the claim is bogus.
Your statement that starts with "While this could be the first salvo in an attempt to undo the 2nd Amendment entirely..." is irrelevant about my defense of my assertion that he's a "gun grabber".
Although one should note how every time something does get passed, it's described by "gun grabbers" as a good first step.....
ADDED: The massive funding wasn't of the Heller case per se. It was of legal "research" to support a future case like it, they weren't willing to bet the Supremes would keep dodging the issue like they have since the manufactured Miller case in 1939.
My point is that there is clearly a policy distinction between what liberals are calling "common sense protections", and legislation to _proactively take every gun from every gun owner_. There is a spectrum of opinion wider than [x] gun-grabber [ ] non-gun-grabber, and I don't believe any opinions should be dismissed a priori. There are real arguments to be made in favor of gun regulation, even if those arguments are wrong; holding such opinions does not necessarily mean one is secretly in favor of repealing all gun rights.
Many politicians are openly on the record as wanting to outlaw all abortion, even when there's a danger to mother's health, and even in the case of rape or incest. However, they've missed a minor detail: 54% of Americans are female and they just lost an election over it.
Unfortunately, while I'm happy that they're starting to realize that "this shit won't fly" so to speak, I'm scared that this position has become tenable: when I first took an interest in politics (~1998) "pro-life" position was explicitly defined as "opposition to abortion _other than_ when the mother's health is at risk, or in the case of incest or rape". That simply was not up for debate (the big debates were about parental notification, third trimester abortion, etc...).
Quite frankly passage of the "Partial Birth Abortion" (which defined this in explicitly moralizing terms and likened a different procedure to infanticide, as well as excluded provisions for mother's health, rape/incest, et al) is what I personally think made this tenable. When the distinction between "abortion" and "ALMOST infanticide" has been made using a non-scientific criteria, the gates to encroachment have been opened.
Likewise, the difference between "a military weapon that doesn't belong in our home" and a "grandpa's hunting rifle" is purely cosmetic, you can start arguing that "grandpa's hunting rifle" doesn't belong in your home, either.
What is fairly clear is that organizations that came up with the term "assault weapon" and are pushing for them to be banned are explicitly and openly in favor of confiscation. of far more than "assault weapons".
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here."
Restricting the sale of things doesn't do anything about their installed base. Gun owners already own guns. They can currently do or obtain the thing you want to ban -- and every time you even mention banning something, the sales go through the roof. So, as a gun control advocate, you might want to stop doing that unless you're sufficiently positive both that you'll succeed and that your success will outweigh the instantaneous increase it causes in the installed base of the bad thing. Which is a hard calculus to accept, because of the installed base, which makes any dividends that come from a ban only accrue very slowly over a long period of time. You aren't causing certain classes of firearms to not exist anymore, or taking them away from the classes of people who already have them, you're only causing there not to be a single digit percentage more of them next year. Which is pretty weak consolation if the discussion of the ban caused there to be a large multiple of that increase this year, and most of the money that would have gone to the increase in future years just goes to the nearest analog or a purchase by proxy in the future years.
Moreover, you can't identify any subset of guns that can be used to kill people and ban only those. You can kill someone just as dead just as fast with a revolver as with an AR15, and the differences between an AR15 and a hunting rifle are entirely cosmetic.
And prohibiting high capacity magazines is only even theoretically productive if your sole concern is mass shootings, which are such a small percentage of gun violence that it's very hard to take seriously as a meaningful reform.
The problem is that real gun control, i.e. going into peoples homes and taking away all their existing firearms, is comprehensively politically infeasible even regardless of the constitutionality.
So we get half measures that are at best ineffective. Bans on guns that look scary. "Background checks" even though first time criminals won't be flagged and hardened criminals are more than willing to steal or pass a false ID or use an accomplice with a clean record. They're all just security theater to satisfy the need for something to be done.
And though I am not a fan of guns, I find myself quite sympathetic to the argument that the proper solution is to go to the root cause and do what is necessary to reduce the number of people who come to find murder as an acceptable solution to their problems, rather than going out and trying to prohibit every dangerous thing an already-malicious actor could use to harm another living soul.
I was surprised, but most gun crimes are committed by a small subset of people, and most multi-offend. I expected them to get their weapons from theft, but there's a surprisingly large (I think majority) which come from private party out of state sales -- at least in LA, a lot come from accomplices buying in AZ and then reselling. (for handguns, which are the vast majority -- there are some more exotic automatic/smg weapons brought from mexico, while US handguns go down to mexico)
There should be a way to catch the out of state buyers. A lot of the associates of criminals are themselves criminals, so NCIC on private party sales would actually push them toward more stolen weapons. If you could additionally increase the odds of catching these straw man purchasers and giving them felony convictions, you'd seriously hurt the supply. Combine that with safe storage and theft reporting, and you'd make a much bigger impact than the AWB, at a much lower cost to legitimate gun owners.
The question is whether pushing criminals toward theft would actually accomplish anything. If they still end up with largely the same number of guns, all you're doing is increasing the rate of theft, which could actually be more dangerous (especially where the criminals and the theft victims are both armed). But I guess we don't know unless we try.
I would also be interested to know whether the repeat offenders are largely gang members, because that probably changes the outcome quite a lot: A background check is a lot more likely to stop an individual felon than a gang with the manpower to knock off a gun store periodically or intimidate the owner into supplying a stream of firearms under false documents or even set up a machine shop and manufacture them internally.
The repeat offenders are mainly gang, mainly drug gang. Most gangs have some sort of hazy membership procedures compared to other organizations, so you've got a lot of affiliates. (the irony here is I know about US gangs primarily due to talking with FBI/police people who were working with the US military in Iraq/Afghanistan to teach them how to go after crime/terrorism/insurgency using police tactics...)
Robbing gun stores is actually a fairly unsuccessful crime. Outside MS-13, virtually none of the street gangs operating in the US has any degree of tactical proficiency; they can't go toe to toe with police patrol officers, let alone the kind of people who tend to own gun shops (in their own territory...)
Most of the robberies for guns seem to be burglary (and in places where people are morons and leave truck guns visible in their vehicle...), or might be faked somehow (like a way to transfer by calling it a "theft", but actually being compensated). They're not against gun stores usually.
In-house manufacture is definitely a thing (and ironically you can make a full-auto open-bolt weapon more easily than a normal gun), but not generally done as much in the US due to easier availability of other guns, and brand/hollywood preference for specific types of pretty guns.
It's undeniable that there's an individual right to own firearms, but it is equally undeniable that it can be restricted. The problem is that we have very little idea of what works, only what doesn't (Assault Weapon Bans being square in "what doesn't").
I'm in strong support of most of President Obama's gun policy (especially what he has achieved using execute orders), but in strong opposition to the Assault Weapon Ban. It is pushed by anti-gun groups (who have realized they're wasting their time advocating unpopular and legally infeasible positions), for the same reasons pro-lifers (pretty much in the same boat) have pushed "partial birth abortion" bans. This comparison is not original to me: http://townhall.com/columnists/jacobsullum/2003/10/24/what_p...
To those unfamiliar with either, briefly:
* "Partial birth abortion" ban targeted one procedure whereas other procedures that can be used to perform abortion equally as late into pregnancy are permitted.
* Assault weapon bans go after firearms having things like pistol grips and flash hiders while allowing the same caliber, rate of fire, magazine capacity, etc... firearms to be sold freely.
* Both are deliberate stated and marketed to look like something they actually aren't: "partial birth abortion" sounds like infanticide, "assault weapon" sounds like "assault rifle" when true assault rifles are fully-automatic and already strictly restricted (effectively banned) by the 1934 National Firearms Act.
* Both seize on sense of visual disgust: a civilian semi-auto AR-15 looks like a military full-auto M4/M16; the actual procedures banned by the "partial birth" abortion law is very ghastly to watch (but I'd argue, so is a woman dying in childbirth or being forced to give birth after incest or rape, or a child being raised by drug addicted mother, etc...)
* Both give leeway to politicians who want to look moderate (I think this is key here): someone unfamiliar with the specifics (most are not) can easily say "I support firearm ownership, but not for assault weapons" or "I support abortion, but not partial birth abortion
* Both are advocated by groups that advocate what most consider extreme. Anti-gun groups in support of the Assault Weapon Ban have been on the record as advocating laws similar to Australia and UK (complete ban on semi-automatics, significant restrictions -- but not outright bans -- on other weapons). I'll challenge to find a single person/group who has originated a piece of "partial-birth abortion" ban legislator who did not favour overturning Roe v. Wade.
* Both are in "plausibly permissible by case law" reading of the constitution. Supreme Court has used "immediate scrutiny" doctrine to uphold partial birth abortion bans. Supreme Court may overturn some provisions of Assault Weapon Ban bans but uphold others if they employ the same standard (or they may use "strict scrutiny" argument for second amendment since it's an enumerated right, IANAL so I can't tell).
I'm generally liberal-to-moderate (moderate for a coastal Californian, unequivocally liberal elsewhere in the US), and am on the record as opposing both. Yet, extreme folks on either side as well as the moderates can acuse me of doing nothing to stop the murder of children.
[Edit: few more thoughts --
Perhaps we are also thinking differently: we're coldly intellectualizing this argument, when most people just want something done. I don't mean to use this as a snide remark: easing popular fears does reduce the likelihood of actual violence or other accidents. This is akin to placebo effect of a gelatin capsule curing pain: pain has an undeniable emotional/stress component to it and if we allay that component (by making the recipient of medicine think they're being physiologically cured), there are positive effect to be had.
If I was starting a country today, there would not be a "right to bear arms" any more than a "right to drive cars": citizens would be freely able to exercise both (protected as "unenumerated rights"), subject to certain regulation (training required to obtain a license, mandatory insurance, periodic re-testing, different prices for different firearms based on externalities they expose, etc..) that would be permissible for unenumerated rights ("can be restricted, but only if there when it serves a compelling interest") but not enumerated ones ("can only be restricted in case of clear and present danger"). Indeed, this policy would probably mean responsible gun owners, once licensed, would actually be less restricted than today: Czech Republic is an example of a country with similar laws, if someone wants to see an international example. Finland is another example (not as permissive Texas, Czech Republic, or even California, but less restrictive in practice than New York or Illinois).
However, I am not starting a country today: if we start repealing or equivocating away chunks of the Bill of Rights, we're in a very dangerous land. This, by the way is a liberal argument, not a conservative one: generally it's the liberal or libertarian organizations that oppose tightening of fourth amendment restrictions after terrorists acts, supporting the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, etc... ]
The first time I hit the space bar I get text rendered over an image, and it's hard to read.
Further page-downs trigger the video, but there's no obvious place to look for what's causing the sound since the video is not centered on the page. It's off to the side, and either close to the top or the bottom of the screen.
It's much like someone handing something to you to read, and then as soon you try to read it they start talking to you.
Video keeps playing even if I've moved further down and the video is mostly off-screen.
I appreciate people trying to do something a little more engaging but it's not done well enough here to offset the annoyances. It distracts from the content.
Based on choppiness when scrolling, it does seem however that browsers still have a way to go in performance. I look forward to when scrolling a page like that is as smooth as butter on any device / browser combo.
I often feel like all these HTML5 effects are not needed to convey the message.
(However, it's cool that the videos start playing on the scroll event.)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/shootings/ANNE...
Meanwhile drones are happily killing lots of people on other continents and that is ok.
Because the state has the monopoly of violence.
And it is slowly trying to disarm its own citizens as to be sure that the day people realize they're governed by an oppressive government they won't be able to do anything about it.
How many deaths in 2012 due to complication related to obesity? How many due to guns? How many due to road accidents?
Find your priorities and pick up the good fights. The ones taking away the only thing preventing a dictatorial government from being impossible to revolt against ain't one of them.
Well more than 100 million previously disarmed people were rounded up at gunpoint and their rights were violated to the point they were killed.
Those movies and comic books had some real world inspiration, after all.
Yes, you could organise resistance movements. People did that a lot, even on German occupied areas. And they were thorns in regular army side. But no resistance would suffice to win WW2, because by that time war required very costly machines.
You think Jews or Poles could maybe shoot at Germans taking them from homes? Yeah - they did that. And escaped to forests, and ambushed them, etc. Poles even did uprising and liberated Warsaw for roughly a month. Guns weren't that big problem - they massproduced them in homes and hidden factories. Tanks and flamethrowers and bombers and logistic were the problem. Germans retook and obliterated the city to be 90% flat.
Do you really think people in USA could overthrow government if it went Nazi? Assuming army is supporting the government. I think it's very naive argument.
Also pre-WW2 Poland had quite liberal laws regarding gun ownership - you only needed positive opinion from local police station. Didn't helped.
One other point you're ignoring is wealth and the development of guns that don't take a great deal of maintenance to keep working (e.g. non-corrosive primers). However liberal Polish policies were, and I can't possibly believe they were for Polish Jews, many fewer people could afford to keep a functioning gun of military utility. Things are very much different today, with cheap reliable designs like the AK family and non-corrosive primers.
The other problem is that we're addressing different scenarios. Guns vs. a mechanized invasion: yep, that's bad. But I'm talking about governments killing what were nominally their own people. Armenians in Turkey. Jews in greater Germany, which points out the problem of numbers on each side. Lenin and Stalin killing more than both combined, in once case the latter arresting 1/3 of the residents of Leningrad in one night (!).
Guns are really useless against the agents of the state, no matter how expensive they make genocide or mass deportations or executions? I mean, does any state have an infinite supply of thugs?
Well, maybe police all over the country discriminated against Jews when making each decision, I don't know, but no difference between non-Jewish and Jewish Poles regardin gun ownership law. Antisemitism in pre-war Poland was very different from that in Germany (antisemitic party was always second in elections, for example, ruling party and Piłsudski (the guy in charge) weren't antisemites, and even the antisemitic party never proposed killing Jews as a solution). But that's another subject (yes, there were a few laws discriminating agains Jews- the most famous is quota on places on university for Jews).
> Our recent difficulties in the Middle East would seem to argue against your assertions.
The difference in army budget between ME countries and USA is orders of magnitude. And still rebeliants needed help from regular army in many cases.
> Guns are really useless against the agents of the state, no matter how expensive they make genocide or mass deportations or executions? I mean, does any state have an infinite supply of thugs?
According to [1] the second country in the world by number of guns per citizen is Serbia. Incidentely - Serbia had genocide not that long ago. Third is Yemen, which also had genocide. Fourth is Switzerland, which, exactly like USA, wouldn't have problems with genocides even without mass weapon ownership.
My conclusion is - in poor countries gun ownership don't prevent genocide. In rich countries genocides are prevented by government, and if government want to do genocide, guns won't help, cause government is rich.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...
Serbia et. al. was a long drawn out war; e.g. Srebrenica was sacked after a successful siege; this simply does not address my points.
As for your latter point and Europe, after the 30 Years War one would have hoped more would realize that widespread rifle ownership was an existential issue. The Swiss did, at least in due course. Others obviously did not, although as I've pointed out elsewhere wealth had a whole lot to do with that, plus the higher maintenance required by older guns.
That's a complete non sequitur of an argument. You migth as well argue for conscription on that basis. I think you're confused.
It was a stark object lesson in the potential fate of unarmed civilian communities, and I'm sure it was an input into the Swiss system, which of course includes conscription.
I know nothing about that revolution so I can't comment on the rest. Although ... were they using FMJ or lead or soft nose bullets? Big difference in wounding capability....
I'd imagine they would be using whatever was popular in bordering US states at the time: a lot of this was actually privately purchased across the border (not straw purchased by the DOJ unlike today)
This was right before, concurrently, and shortly following World War I. So I'd imagine looking at ammunition advertisements (particularly from, e.g., El Paso, TX newspapers) around that time would help.
1) To be honest I'm not the biggest fan of arguing about overthrowing US government, as:
a) Very few people (certainly not me) are willing to risk their lives for abstract ideas. In other words, this would have to be a fairly significant encroachment, e.g., suspension of all civil rights or a military junta coming into power (arguably, this almost happened in the 1930s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot): the point is to use first amendment etc... first to prevent it from getting that point.
Yet, a lot of people don't even bother to research the issue, or vote (even for a protest candidate). Vast majority of people don't know what "14th amendment incorporation" is, or that Iraq did not actually have WMDs. So overriding political apathy is and defending encroachments of any civil rights is more important to me: instead of panic buying firearms, people's money is better spent donating to ACLU, EFF, and SAF.
b) The preamble does not mean that being part of a militia capable of challenging the federal government is the only legitimate reason for firearm ownership. In essence it's as if first amendment was prefixed with "Excellent newspapers being necessary for..." -- I don't think an intellectually honest person would use this to argue that it should exclude any other medium of expression, any more that constitution explicitly authorizing an army and a navy doesn't mean it's unconstitutional to create an air force.
However, given that individuals serving in state militias (which, again, were not intended strictly to take on the federal government) required individuals to bring their own firearms -- it does suggest that firearms in common civilian usage should not be restricted in a way that prohibits common legitimate civilian firearm use. Note that this is still leaves a lot of place for gun control, regulation, and further rulings.
2) You're making the assumption that if such a scenario does happen (again, something I don't think about much myself), the citizens will be fighting the full force of US government all by themselves without any popular support.
Well, first if that is they case, they're probably an extremist group that deserves to lose. If they have wide popular support and the backing of another power (as was case during Mexican revolution), the civilian firearms would only serve as a means to gain access to a fuller range of options and/or to "join forces" with significant factions of US armed forces that would defect. I'm pretty certain that if given orders to suspend the entire Bill of Rights nationally, most of US military and police would refuse to follow them: irregular civilian groups trapped in pockets that do "follow orders" would be able to use common firearms (these could even be bolt action rifles) to break to rebel controlled territory.
Again, though, I'm not too comfortable arguing this: it's probably more likely that deprived of education, apathetic about politics, yet given sufficient electronic toys, "bread and circuses", and yes -- firearms to fulfill their commando fantasies -- the populace would simply vote to repeal The Bill of Rights. This is something I'm far more afraid of.
I don't want to fight this on HN, but here's why I hold the views that I hold:
I remember a time in high school AP US History class: it was a mock "re-trial" of a famous free speech case and I was chosen to "play" the role of Clarence Darrow. I argued that first amendment protects a near absolute right to free speech ("clear and present" danger being the limit).
Somebody in the audience, however, said that "If you use this argument with the first amendment, what does this mean for the second amendment and guns?". This was shortly after Columbine and long before Heller, so I gave the standard "second amendment is a collective right" response.
However, deep down I felt it was a bullshit response. It got me an A, but I later learned that this probably not what Clarence Darrow would argue: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/trialheroes/Da...). First ten amendments are not arbitrary, they represent the analogue of the English Bill of Rights that constitution itself did not include.
That has a few implications. First, we can't simply equivocate it away by reading the constitution to read what we want to read it. Now if you do indeed feel that the second amendments prohibits what would otherwise be good public policy, then argue for its repeal. However, I'm very uncomfortable with this idea for a simple reason: every single fundamental right in the bill of rights can be exercised in a dangerous manner (especially the first) or comes into conflict with security (government's legitimate role in reduction of violence).
Were the founders right to include the second amendment? I don't know, but I am not comfortable with -- for the first time in US history -- repealing a fundamental liberty. You can try equating it with slavery, but you know that's b.s. -- slavery involves coercing another human being, the lone act of possessing a firearm does not.
There are certainly limits on the second amendment (much like there are limits on the first amendment): no one disagrees that certain people should not be allowed to own firearms or that especially dangerous and unusual firearms can be banned.
See another comment I made on this matter on how this thinking fits into more concrete policy ideas: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070170 (tl;dr background checks on 100% of purchases -- good, more authority to stop and investigate straw purchases and weapon trafficking -- great, assault weapon bans -- pointless and dangerous)
Mass death in the 20th century is much more the outcome of the industrial revolution (in the west) and the catastrophic failure of collective agriculture (in Asia). There were no systematic campaigns of public disarmament. The comparisons to Nazi Germany are overblown, often reflect a complete misunderstanding of history (eg the belief that Hitler was left wing), and generally ignore context such as a long history of popular anti-semitism dating back centuries, if not millenia.
A lot of "Good Germans" were allowed to keep arms (I think this has to do with Hitler's outward focus vs.the more inward of the Soviet Union; Hitler thought Germany was in an 11th hour situation so he was a lot more merely authoritarian that one might think); no one's claiming a general disarmament of the nation, just of the Jews, and of course other untermenschen).
I and we know there was a "systematic campaigns of public disarmament" in the USSR; as I recall, by modern times unlicensed possession of a single round of handgun ammo was technically punishable by death. In China it was part of the revolution, look up rifle taxes. That more people were killed by inept collective agriculture has absolutely no bearing on those who were killed by more direct means (in fact, a lot of "Kulacks" or "landlords" to clear the way for it).
When your sources don't support what you say they do, and you're rebutting claims I didn't make, it's hard to believe you're arguing in good faith; I don't expect to be making many future replies to you.
People (not you) make that claim all the damn time, and I find it hard to believe you're not aware of this. Opponents of gun control are very fond of drawing a causal link between gun control and genocide and then hedging on the technicalities when challenged on this. I'm really tired of it. If you want to me to argue in good faith, provide support for your positive propositions from the get go. Support your claim that over 100m were disarmed prior to being subjected to genocide. I call bullshit on it.
Assault weapons don't stand a chance against drones, but I'm willing to bet they out number them and have a lot more trained operators.
My AR-15 was around $900 when I bought it(~2 years ago). Now the same gun is going for $1000+, and there's not even new legislation yet. If these weapons get banned, the criminals that all ready own them will see a gain in their net worth.
I don't see how raising the value of 'criminal' assets is going to help anyone.
Paranoid is an easy answer. A much more difficult answer is that our country has used it's excessive force on the unarmed before. What's to stop them once their governing body(the citizens) is unarmed?
Amen. They can have my Twitter when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
Let's talk about the effectiveness of using a bit of animation in what is otherwise a flat picture. The animated, half-mast flag is emphasized, and reawakens our alarm about the violence of guns by associating it with many other national emergencies, including the 9-11 Attacks.
Let's talk about the effectiveness of carefully moving our attention to a new topic by employing a fading background connected to the scrolling action. We have little room to pause and think and doubt the material, the next topic is already materializing before us.
etc. etc.
You may not agree with this message, but it is working.
Understanding why your outlook is being countermanded by the techniques employed by the Obama Administration (by way of an html5 developer) may help you see your POV to action far more than your own - text-based - propaganda here.
I'm fascinated by this viewpoint, but I'm afraid I've never fully understood it. How many weapons to the population have to have before the state is no longer considered to pose a threat? Do we stop at clubs or knives? Small arms? Assault weapons? Explosives? Armoured vehicles? Missiles?
> How many deaths in 2012 due to complication related to obesity? How many due to guns? How many due to road accidents?
Those three are almost entirely unrelated. Complications related to obesity almost only ever affect the physical wellbeing of the obese person. Road accidents arise from the operation of a useful tool by many millions of people, every day, and generally aren't malicious (and thus are more difficult to prevent). This doesn't make these two causes of death any less tragic, but the sort of gun violence the current US administration wishes to legislate against is wanton slaughter of humans, pure and simple. To paraphrase Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine"[0], assault weapons and armour piercing rounds are not useful for hunting[1].
[0]: Now there's something you could call "propaganda". That movie had a lot of good information, but it was often obscured by horrible misrepresentation and questionable conclusions.
[1]: Contrary to popular belief, gun control does not preclude those who need weapons in their day-to-day lives from purchasing them. Gun control is not a binary.
A monopoly on violence it a huge responsibility that today we balance with the liability that comes inherent in being a democracy. It seems today however that the extent to which the government uses it's monopoly requires a great deal more liability.
Since liability requires transparency, the realization that the government has a monopoly on violence should in turn reinforce importance of transparency in all things the government does. If the government feels the need to act independently without overview in some matter, that additional responsibility should come out of a "responsibility budget" that always remains in balance with a liability budget. If you want secret police and your responsibility budget is running low, fill it back up by adding some additional liability (perhaps steeper penalties for government officials that break the law) or free up some responsibility budget by reducing responsibility in other areas (perhaps by disarming other police).
Totalitarianism occurs when we give governments a responsibility budget completely decoupled from liability.
I have a complex opinion on gun rights and I don't support all aspects of Obama's plan, but the fact that it is propaganda does not make it inherently wrong.
The USA is still a democracy.