Posted on 08/12/2016 10:46:27 AM PDT by PROCON
How much gun control would be enough? This is a question that I pose to advocates of control, trying to find out where they would draw the line. What requirement, what level of strictness would reach the point that something more would be unacceptable?
The history of firearms laws in the United States is well known to members of the gun community. In the twentieth century, the waves of control rise first with the Sullivan Act in New York State in 1911 and ebb and flow over the next hundred years, peaking with the Brady Act and the Assault Weapons Ban in the early 90s. Since that time, the only major federal changes in gun laws have been the two Supreme Court rulings that affirmed the right to own firearms throughout the country.
The states have led the way in the modern trend of gun laws, generally loosening them with the exception of New York and California, among a few others. One illustration of this is the progress in the legal carry of handguns, starting with Florida becoming a shall-issue state in 1987. Since then, some provision for carry has been created in every state, and forty-two either allow residents to be armed without a license or issue a license to anyone who can pass a background check and basic test.
The fluctuations of the homicide numbers over the same period calls the effectiveness of gun laws into question. Murders occurred a rate of some six per hundred thousand in 1900, rising to bounce between eight and ten in the 20s and 30s and then again from the 60s to early 90s. In the 40s and 50s, the rate was between four and six, and we’ve dropped back to that low since the mid 90s.
If we’re going to seek answers on the basis of this history, we’ll have to accept that the conclusions will be tentative, thanks to the messy nature of the data. A first approximation suggests that letting people own and carry what and where they wish, so long as they have passed a check of criminal and mental health records, achieves good results. This risks charges of confusing correlation with causation, but it’s safe to say that what we’ve done over the last three decades hasn’t made things worse.
So the question remains—what would be enough, from the perspective of gun control advocates? What would be the last law they’d insist on enacting?
This question stymies advocates of greater control. I’ve asked it many times, only to get hemming and hawing in response. And I suspect that what’s going on here is an unwillingness to admit that the desire for gun laws has little if anything to do with saving lives. The practical reality of law is that there is a maximal level of effect beyond which any new restrictions will achieve no better results.
And then there’s the matter of rights. If we take rights into account, there are lines that we must not cross. And the coyness of gun control advocates shows their disdain for the essential liberties of their fellow human beings.
How much? Less than we have now.
That is the real issue. When I postulate this to my gun grabbing friends, they finally realize that the end result of gun confiscation will be a stand off they do not want to see. This is when they fall back to “common sense” rules but never intend to include mental health concerns that would put mental health professionals on the line.
No, the only solution is the 2nd amendment and the ballot. Vote for NRA endorsed candidates where an election has a chance of addressing gun confiscation.
You mean shitbirds like Joe Manchin?
HELL no!!!
...what they want is a 100% ban and door-to-door confiscation.
At gunpoint....
They will run out of cobfiscators. King George III tried this at Lexington, and it ultimately cost him thousands of Redcoats and the 13 Colonies. Never forget that.
And it cost a great many Patriots their lives and fortunes ... their sacred honor, they retained.
And that's why I'm voting for Trump.
Hillary Rotten Clinton must be kept out of the White House.
Let’s consider high capacity magazines.
Suppose, the law allows 30 round magazines.
Suppose, there is a mass casualty shooting, say 30 killed, and we ban all magazines over 20 rounds.
Suppose, there is another mass casualty shooting, with only 20 killed. Would the gun controllers say that saving 10 lives is enough or would they want to ban all magazines over 10 rounds?
Where does it end?
I guess these liberalLSD folks never read American history about Prohibition. Same thing will happen.
Another question I have for gun control advocates. Has anyone noticed that the most vociferous supporters of, ahem, “sensible” gun control laws tend to have serious ethical and/or legal issues of their own? Clinton, Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson Jr, fmr NY Assy speaker Sheldon Silver, who’s been sentenced to 12 yrs for corruption, Leeland Yee who was forced to resign from Congress to do time for..wait for it... GUN RUNNING. Oh, yeah remember Bernie Ward? He was gonna be the Rush Limbaugh of left wing talk radio. Guess what? He did time for kiddie porn. This is nothing new.One of the first gun control regs, the Sullivan Laws in NY rom 1911. What the gun grabbers don’t tell you is WHO those laws are named for.Big Tim Sullivan a Tammany Hall operative even more corrupt than both Clintons combined. He wanted to make the streets of NYC safer, for him and his cronies as well as the gangsters and muggers in his back pocket. Around 25 yrs ago the Gun Violence death clock was put up near Times Sq. It was funded by Robert Brennan, a junk bond dealing scam artist who makes Bernie Madoff look like Mother Theresa. He had just gotten out of fed prison for securities fraud and other such niceties. I’m sure he had a pragmatic reason for performing this “public service”. Hey, if I scammed all those old folks out of their life savings I too would be scared sh!tless is they, their kids or grandkids had easy access to firearms. Just sayin’..
Country folks can hide them pretty good, city folks not so much. After the storm blows over bring them back out. Where I live it’s Shoot, shovel, shut up.
I’ve always thought that going to bed and not waking up in the morning would be my first choice. Going down in a hail of gunfire while taking as many as possible with me was my second. It’s beginning to look like #2 is much more likely. Damn it!
The progressive is never sated in the advancement of his goal to rid us of our freedom and God given Liberties.
Every single letter of every single word of every single sentence of every single piece of legislation that attempts to regulate the keeping and bearing of arms is fundamentally and absolutely unconstitutional.
The government has ZERO power to regulate - the constitution is very plain on this.
I fear a government trying to take away my arms more that I do the prospect of a serial killer with a tommy gun.
The game ends with enormous pits filled with lime covered corpses. A state where only the police have guns is a police state, but since the left are too stupid to connect Bernie and Venezuela, trying to explain anything to them is a fool’s errand.
With knives & pointy sticks being next on the list.
Obama, Hillary, and Pelosi are sincere when they say they do not want to take away your guns. If you are a bona fide hunter, you will be allowed to own a bolt action hunting rifle, and a hunting shotgun. If you are a bona fide target shooter and are a member of a shooting club, you will be allowed to own a target rifle. If you are a bona fide action shooter (IPSC, etc.) then you will be allowed to own a handgun or semi-auto rifle or shotgun, so long as it is stored under lock and key at the gun club, not in the home.
You will pay for an annual license that will detail each firearm you own, and will have to renew that license periodically.
You will not be allowed to keep a handgun in the home, and you will not be allowed to own a shotgun or rifle with more than a 5 round capacity. (Exceptions may be made for bona fide competition shooters.)
This is the European and Australian model, and the non-gun owning gun control advocates truly believe that these are reasonable restrictions.
No, they don't want to take away all of your guns, just the ones they don't like you to have.
....and Harry Reid
I don't.
“How much gun control would be enough?”
I suspect he knows the answer to that. But the GUN GRABBERS are now smart enough to know that they have to warm the water slowly...with the objective to make it more and more difficult to buy and hold on to firearms. Then, once enough people are disarmed/unarmed, they swoop in for the kill, as they did in Australia.
Very often I will troll on left-wing and non-partisan sites saying how excited I am that Hillary will accomplish the dream of gun-grabbers, which is to remove all guns from people that cannot demonstrate a “professional need” for owning one (i.e., the 95% of the country that are not in military, law enforcement, or other types of security professions).
The answers I get back are VERY INTERESTING. There is the group (on our side) that supports gun ownership and has nothing good to say about Hillary (and plenty of bad things to say). Then there are the people that say things like: “Relax, Hillary will not take your gun away”. “You are an idiot, all Hillary wants is ‘common-sense gun safety legislation’”. And I’m not kidding about the second one - that is their new code-phrase for gun control “common-sense gun safety legislation”.
What is most interesting is that NO ONE says “Yep, we cannot wait to disarm you bastards”...even though they all think that. That is what makes them VERY DANGEROUS, they know what to NOT to say to accomplish their goals - we should NEVER yield an inch to them - and so far, believe it or not, Republicans have not.
***How much gun control would be enough?***
Nelson “Pete” Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc, (Now the Brady Center) told how much was enough in THE NEW YORKER back in 1976.
Nelson T. ‘Pete’ Shields
Founder of Handgun Control, Inc.
“I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest.
Of course, it’s true that politicians will then go home and say, ‘This is a great law. The problem is solved.’ And it’s also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time.
So then we’ll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time.
My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered.
And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — TOTALLY ILLEGAL.”
-Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., “A Reporter At Large: Handguns,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1976, 57-58
“Yes, I’m for an outright ban [on handguns].”
-Pete Shields, Chairman emeritus, Handgun Control, Inc., 60 Minutes interview
HCI, around 1984, came out in favor of a ban on semi-auto rifles and shotguns.
Just remember, ENOUGH is never ENOUGH!
If I remember correctly, back in the late 1980s the Brady Bunch did a publicity stunt and took a large number of confiscated semi-auto rifles and ran a steam roller over them.
They had to roll over them time and time again as they just could not “kill the beast”.
Hence Bloomberg's, et al push for "Universal Background Checks" to reduce Domestic Violence (cough), which entail filling out a BATF Form 4473.
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