The Perpetual Gun Control Thread

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CharminTide

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It might be best to provide a more permanent place for this recurring discussion rather than overtaking the tragedy threads each time.

To start things off, I think Australia's response to its gun violence problem was pretty well-conceived. Here's an Aussie's description:

What it's Like to Own Guns in a Country with Strict Gun Control

I love firearms. I collect them and I enjoy shooting them. I probably have 30 pistols and 20 rifles or shotgun combinations. My family has always had lots and lots of firearms. My father was a shooter and we had a property when I was growing up, so from the age of 12 I had a rifle. Target shooting was offered as a school sport and I used to carry my .308 rifle to the rifle range unsupervised with my friends on Saturday for practice and competition.

Then, after the 1996 massacre, I probably had to hand in six to eight semiautomatic rifles and shotguns to the police. We got fair value for them, but I wasn’t thrilled to be doing it because I thought “Well gee, what have I done wrong?” Would anything untoward ever have happened with the firearms I owned? No.

A lot of people think there aren’t any guns in Australia any more, but there are. By some estimates there is one gun for every seven people. My local suburban pistol club has 300 members. My sons have been shooting since they were 12 and both have rifle and pistol licenses.

It’s actually not that hard to own a gun. But you do have to have a genuine reason. You have to be a member of a target shooting club or a hunter and you have to prove it. For hunting, you can get written permission from a landowner who says you are hunting on his land. Or you can join a hunting club. Pistols [handguns], on the other hand, are heavily restricted. All applicants undergo a background check by the police and there is a mandatory 30 day cooling off period for all license applications, both long arms and pistols. Firearms safety training courses are mandatory as well.

One of the biggest changes is that the government established different types of firearms for different categories of guns and ruled that each would need different licenses. Here’s roughly how it works:

Category A is .22s, shotguns and air rifles. That’s the easiest license to obtain. No semiautomatics are allowed.

Category B is for center fire rifles. You have to provide a reason for why you need a more powerful gun. I shoot feral pigs and foxes; that’s a valid reason. Again, no semiautomatics.

Category C is available only to farmers; they can own a semiautomatic shotgun or .22 but the cartridges are limited to five shots for the shotgun and 10 shots for the .22.

Category D, for semiautomatic guns and rifles, is only for professional shooters: you have to have a registered business and prove that you are earning an income through shooting.

An H license is for handguns. If you want to buy a pistol in Australia you’ve got to be a member of a target pistol club. You’ve got to do a minimum of eight competition shoots per year to keep your license. If you don’t, you lose it.

If you were to ask the average Australian who isn’t a shooter, they would say that most people shouldn’t have access to any firearms. But the reality is that gun-lovers like me belong to a club and are doing no harm. I go clay pigeon shooting on a Saturday. I go pistol shooting on Sunday morning. That’s my hobby. And then every month or every eight weeks I go and visit my friend’s farm and hunt his feral pigs. He loses about 1,500 to 2,000 lambs a year to feral pigs. So we deal with them.

People who love to shoot in Australia look at the situation in America with dismay. We all want to be able to continue our sport. All these mass killings are giving it a bad name. It’s making everybody fear people like me, where they should have no fear.
 

crimsonaudio

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This one is always brought up, but they didn't have to circumvent an equivalent to the 2A, nor the subsequent SCOTUS rulings.

It's a tough, uphill climb here - it's a very different situation than what AUS faced.
 

gtowntide

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The gun lobby, primarily the NRA, is in so many politician's pockets that I don't expect anything to change. I thought Sandy Hook would be a catalyst for better gun laws but it didn't.
I'm not anti gun and I own 3, but I don't see why anyone needs an AR15. We don't have to totally ban gun ownership, but we do need to address the laws that govern gun ownership. I don't see anything being done with the current administration so one can only hope for the future.
How many more of these school shootings will we see?
 

CharminTide

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This one is always brought up, but they didn't have to circumvent an equivalent to the 2A, nor the subsequent SCOTUS rulings.

It's a tough, uphill climb here - it's a very different situation than what AUS faced.
You're right. Australia is brought up frequently, but I feel like many people think guns were outlawed after the buyback. They definitely weren't, and I actually think they've found a reasonable way to allow responsible people to own guns while both limiting the ability for nutjobs to purchase them and preventing non-gunowners from finding someone else's weapon to use on themselves or others. The situations are different, but I think we can still learn from their experiences.

Although the 2nd amendment is already a limited right, that's obviously the legal hurdle. Another significant difference between the two countries is that handguns in Australia were always tightly regulated. Assault rifles are the weapons that make the news, but it's handguns that are responsible for most homocides and suicides.

FWIW, here's the guy's (outside) perspective.

One big difference is that in Australia, we think owning a gun is a privilege, and in America people think of it as a right.

When then Prime Minister John Howard proposed the gun law I marched like everybody else did in opposition to it. But I now fully endorse what he did. I didn’t like handing over my rifles, but at the end of the day, it’s a small price to pay not to have the nut-jobs walking through shopping centers and massacring innocent people.

Australia is a great country. You can go hunting, you can go shooting. And as long as you hurt nobody and abide the law you can continue to do it. That to me is freedom. The idea of having people own guns with no concept of gun safety and no reason to have a gun? That is not my idea of freedom.
 

Jon

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You're right. Australia is brought up frequently, but I feel like many people think guns were outlawed after the buyback. They definitely weren't, and I actually think they've found a reasonable way to allow responsible people to own guns while both limiting the ability for nutjobs to purchase them and preventing non-gunowners from finding someone else's weapon to use on themselves or others. The situations are different, but I think we can still learn from their experiences.

Although the 2nd amendment is already a limited right, that's obviously the legal hurdle. Another significant difference between the two countries is that handguns in Australia were always tightly regulated. Assault rifles are the weapons that make the news, but it's handguns that are responsible for most homocides and suicides.

FWIW, here's the guy's (outside) perspective.
then you have this country where our CDC is explicitly restricted from even studying the reasons for gun death in the country.
 

CullmanTide

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We have more than enough gun laws, thats a fact. Criminals have and always will have them, that is also a fact. They can take my guns off my rotting corpse. Trust me thats the only way they will get them.
 

selmaborntidefan

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It might be best to provide a more permanent place for this recurring discussion rather than overtaking the tragedy threads each time.

To start things off, I think Australia's response to its gun violence problem was pretty well-conceived. Here's an Aussie's description:

What it's Like to Own Guns in a Country with Strict Gun Control

Now.....remind me again about how many can easily be brought in across the border into Australia from other countries???????

The simple fact of the matter is that anything short of 100% confiscation isn't going to prevent even one. I've never understand why the very same people who tell me that outlawing abortion won't end it and outlawing drugs won't end drug abuse (and they're right on both counts) suddenly reverse field and think that making guns harder to get will end school shootings.
 

Displaced Bama Fan

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then you have this country where our CDC is explicitly restricted from even studying the reasons for gun death in the country.
Gun death types - accidental & intentional.

Accidental - not enough training, careless (mishandling, showing off, weapon not stored properly to allow access by a child), incapacitated (drunk/drugged)

Intentional - malicious with aforethought, self-defense, freaking insane

Did that help?

On a more serious note:

How to stop - Give a full psyche test to anyone who wants to purchase a gun. Review criminal history, medical history, blood test, review all educational records (including school counselor's & Principal/VP/Teacher notes in student's file), review social media, review job history, etc. I don't know man, I really just don't know.
 

CharminTide

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The simple fact of the matter is that anything short of 100% confiscation isn't going to prevent even one.
Well that's just not true. I'll stick with Australia because they're the closest analog to the US. Whether you agree with gun control or not, the rate of gun violence dropped after the buyback. Statistics would tell you that at least one shooting was prevented.



outlawing abortion won't end [abortion] and outlawing drugs won't end drug abuse
Cool strawman, but no one has suggested outlawing guns.
 

92tide

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Well that's just not true. I'll stick with Australia because they're the closest analog to the US. Whether you agree with gun control or not, the rate of gun violence dropped after the buyback. Statistics would tell you that at least one shooting was prevented.




Cool strawman, but no one has suggested outlawing guns.
remember, we're exceptional. we need to focus more on providing an effortless, smooth and efficient process though which one can buy the latest offering from smith and wesson to add to their tool collection.
 

Bamaro

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Its the gun culture that needs to be changed. We live in a gun hugging culture. No other industrialized countries have gun violence like we do here. People here love their guns. Just look here for instance. How many threads devolve into a "look what I have" when talking about guns. People can keep their guns for protection but stop bragging about them and worshiping them. They are simply a useful tool and nothing else. They dont make your penis any larger or more potent. The NRA is the worst for perpetuating this problem.
We changed attitudes in the 80s about drunk driving. We need to do the same now about guns.
 

92tide

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Its the gun culture that needs to be changed. We live in a gun hugging culture. No other industrialized countries have gun violence like we do here. People here love their guns. Just look here for instance. How many threads devolve into a "look what I have" when talking about guns. People can keep their guns for protection but stop bragging about them and worshiping them. They are simply a useful tool and nothing else. They dont make your penis any larger or more potent. The NRA is the worst for perpetuating this problem.
We changed attitudes in the 80s about drunk driving. We need to do the same now about guns.
lots of folks are convinced they are going to be benjamin martin one day leading the charge against the tyrannical government. or dirty harry cleaning up the riff raff
 
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crimsonaudio

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lots of folks are convinced they are going to be benjamin martin one day leading the charge against the tyrannical government. or dirty harry cleaning up the riff raff
I'd bet about 99% of all gun owners simply want to be able to protect themselves and their loved ones.
 

UAH

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Its the gun culture that needs to be changed. We live in a gun hugging culture. No other industrialized countries have gun violence like we do here. People here love their guns. Just look here for instance. How many threads devolve into a "look what I have" when talking about guns. People can keep their guns for protection but stop bragging about them and worshiping them. They are simply a useful tool and nothing else. They dont make your penis any larger or more potent. The NRA is the worst for perpetuating this problem.
We changed attitudes in the 80s about drunk driving. We need to do the same now about guns.
We all live in a world feeling that this will never happen to me or my children. We can't possibly comprehend how it feels for those parents who will be visiting with the coroner today. That is until it does happen to you and your world changes to one of pain and grief forever. As a parent it is too awful to comprehend until we are forced to do so.

If parents could possibly comprehend it we would assure that there would be stricter controls on the purchase of assault and semi automatic weapons and the paraphernalia associated with mass killing.

If parents could comprehend the loss of their child or spouse or themselves to a violent crime attitudes would change completely overnight.

If we could comprehend the impact of violence in our society on families we would be concerned more with the health and education of our entire society versus spending more for military arms than practically every other country in the world combined.
 

Tidewater

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I'm not anti gun and I own 3, but I don't see why anyone needs an AR15.
A not unreasonable position, but in out federal system, the question is not "does anyone have the right to own an AR-15?" but "have the sovereigns in our system delegated to the federal government to power to restrict that ownership?"
The answer to the latter question is clearly "no."
Perhaps the Democrats will feel the power of their convictions and propose an amendment to the Constitution to address this issue and then run on that as a party plank.
 

92tide

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I'd bet about 99% of all gun owners simply want to be able to protect themselves and their loved ones.
i think your number is probably a bit high. marketing for firearms is based greatly on selling the "tactical" (tacticool ;) ) part of owning and carrying firearms, and it is not uncommon for the gop and nra to couch their advocacy in protecting one's self and family from tyrannical government and some imagined dystopic society. protecting family and loved ones (or hunting for that matter) does not require high powered military grade arms, or the ability to push high volumes of lead downrange in short amounts of time.
 

92tide

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A not unreasonable position, but in out federal system, the question is not "does anyone have the right to own an AR-15?" but "have the sovereigns in our system delegated to the federal government to power to restrict that ownership?"
The answer to the latter question is clearly "no."
Perhaps the Democrats will feel the power of their convictions and propose an amendment to the Constitution to address this issue and then run on that as a party plank.
how the "sovereigns" are making their voice heard

link

Most Americans support stronger gun laws — laws that would reduce deaths. But Republicans in Congress stand in the way. They fear alienating their primary voters and the National Rifle Association.

Below are the top 10 career recipients of N.R.A. funding – through donations or spending to benefit the candidate – among both current House and Senate members, along with their statements about the Las Vegas massacre. These representatives have a lot to say about it. All the while, they refuse to do anything to avoid the next massacre.
 
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