That's right. Those who would take away the 2nd Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms would do well to remember that fact!
...American social landscape--with its vast income inequalities, legacy of racial oppression, and enduring frontier mentality—responsible for the conditions in which violence thrives...
Bullsh*t! A vast majority of murders are committed over DRUGS and have absolutely NOTHING to do with income, race (except that blacks tend to commit the most murders, especially against other blacks), or a "frontier mentality" (in Detroit and East L.A.?)
To destroy gun shows. The bill not only requres PRIVATE CITIZENS to obtain a background check on potential buyers in a PRIVATE TRANSACTION, but attempts to force a 3 day waiting period to purchase ANY gun.
The foremost goal of gun licensing is prevention—keeping guns out of the wrong hands —rather than punishment.
Again, BULLSH*T! The foremost goal of gun licensing is universal REGISTRATION so they know exactly where the guns are when the decide to round them up.
There's the issue, all wrapped up neat and tidy right at the beginning.
Most sincere people who would tend to support gun control do so out of a belief that the risk, and prevelence, of violent crime would decrease. This has been dispositively shown not to be the case.
Most folks who support gun rights do so out of a fundamental belief that private ownership of arms is a fundamental human right. They'll stoop to utilitarian arguments if needed to convince the fence-sitters, but would sooner jump off a bridge than surrender their arms, or ask their neighbors to surrender theirs.
In the first case, you meet a luke-warm and emotional desire to 'do good' in the abstract. In the second, you meet reason and logic, but also an adamantine and personal determination to maintain one's personal safety, rights and freedom.
THAT's why the issue is so important and so divisive.
BS. Obviously there are very strong interest groups opposing tough treatment, as evidenced by the revolving door prisons where violent offenders are routinely sent for brief, taxpayer-funded weight-training and networking sojourns.
A savvy criminal can defeat a tracing system by filing down the serial number
There are now techniques that are able to reveal a serial number even after it's been completely machined off (the stamping of the serial number causes some sort of stress on the underlying metal in the shape of the numbers. This "ghost" image can be brought ought even after physcal defacement of the serial number).
The courts won't let the police stop a person because they "believe" he might be armed. Its called reasonable cause. This dweeb points out the fatal flaw in the gun control argument. Namely that we'll impose sanctions on all law abiding citizens in order to stop the law breakers. The law abiding don't need to be stopped and the law breakers won't be stopped.
The author is speaking from theory here, not from data. The latest Justice Department figures indicate that less than 2% of crimes are committed by guns purchased from gun shows. Maybe criminals should (in his opinion) get their guns at guns shows, but they don't. One reason is probably that a whole lot of cops hang out at gun shows too.
But this is excellent: What is the problem for which gun control is the solution?
The problem has little to do with guns directly. The problem is that a number of people who depend on government regulation to mold society in ways congenial to their politics feel that they are insufficiently able to regulate this area, or more properly, this demographic. They view gun owners as "unregulated," and hence lawless. Neither is true.
No national gun laws should ever be made, since no national gun law can be applied differently in North Dakota and Washington DC.
According to U.S. Department of Justice · Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics:
most homocides( 51.5%) and most felony murders (59.2%) are committed by blacks, which are only 12% of the population living on 3% of the land area. The murder rate for most of America, 87% of it, is comparable to most other developed countries.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
States like North Dakota, which have a homocide rate of 0.6% does not need more gun control. The state of North Dakota has a lower homocide rate than any other "country" in the world. There are vast areas of America which are realatively crime free, and no one should tamper with changing things.
Any government action to reduce homocides, should be addressed and applied to only those areas where the homocides are: like in Washington DC,
and leave the rest of the country alone.
LIBERTY! Just ask General Gage, (former) military governor of Boston. Of course, things didn't work out quite as he had planned ....
Gun control isn't about guns, its about control. Thanks to some less than bright anti-gun politicians in NYC, MD and CA, gunowners in this country are aware that registration is a stalking horse for the true anti-gun agenda, one that is the same here as in England and Australia - confiscation.
Canada, a country with no history of violent revolution, is experiencing massive civil disobedience in its attempt to register guns. Even the normally docile Canadians are highly suspicious of their government - and rightly so. I wonder what will happen here when (not if - it will happen) some sort of a registration scheme is implemented? Massive civil disobedience will probably be the least of the problems, IMHO. And that, unlike so much of what has happened in this country for the last couple of generations, would make the Founding Fathers proud.