Comments on: Don't be pessimistic about changing gun laws

By: sailor

sailor — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 21:09:38 +0000

Absoutely – all guns – those with lower potential harm will have lower rates.

By: Snakeoil

Snakeoil — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:23:14 +0000

Since when did you acquire the knowledge of self protection?Who and what will protect me from home invasion? Tell me the solution

By: Dan J. Andrews

Dan J. Andrews — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:26:10 +0000

Up here in Canada, CBC (public radio) interviewed a guy from the gun club in Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) on Tuesday. His first sentence after the salutation was “Gun control laws don’t make any difference….”. Sigh.

Dealing with those kind of people is like dealing with climate change deniers, anti-evolutionists, moon-landing hoaxers. No study, no evidence, no analysis will ever convince them they’re wrong. Hard not to be pessimistic when these same people have bought and brought their pet politicians to pass along their message of denial, doubt and obfuscation.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:05:06 +0000

Sailor, any and all guns, any kind of clip, and any number?

Rick, provide the list of teachers at Sandy Hook who complained that they couldn’t bring their guns to school.

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:52:52 +0000

The US has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world – nine guns for every 10 Americans, per this article and not one law abiding citizen was allowed to bring their guns onto the “Gun Free Zone” called Sandy Hook Elementary to include the gunman that killed 26 people that day…only difference is, the criminal did it anyway knowing law abiding citizens would not be there with guns to defend their own children.

By: sailor

sailor — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:09:52 +0000

I don’t think we should take people’s guns away, it is not the American way. All we need to do is insist that anyone who
owns a gun is fully insured for full third party damage resulting from that gun. Market forces will take care of the rest.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:50:52 +0000

No, Mu, I am focused on reducing death and morbidity associated with guns. You said “gun violence” not me. That is part of it.

Restriction of guns is not restriction of speech. If you really think guns are there for average citizens to make a point, then perhaps you should volunteer yourself to be locked up asap, because that is a very scary thought.

You don’t have a Russian tank division 20 minutes from your house.

Better check your guns and ammo, we might have already taken it when you were busy writing that comment!

By: Mu

Mu — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:30:25 +0000

The bad part for this country is, just like the idiots on the right the left can’t find a reasonable compromise either, in which you’re not very different from most totalitarians. You’re not really interested in reducing gun violence, you’re only interested in total victory over the forces of evil aka people thinking different from you. You would forgo a mandate to have all guns under lock and key at all times (and thereby reducing accidental gun death by a lot) because “it’s not enough”. And you’re completely missing the correlation between restrictions on guns and restriction of speech, oddly enough half the stuff you write would get you in real legal trouble in those “enlightened” gun-restricted countries like Britain and Germany.
As for me personally, compared to a Russian tank division 20 min from my house you’re “coming for you” threat is not even in the same league of scary; maybe rating mildly meddling.
Take all the time you want. I spent years in college opposing the ideology of the SED and their flunkies from the SDS, just to see their ideology die spectacularly in 1989. I’ll wait for your “victory”.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:01:21 +0000

Mu, your comment is full of the usual misconceptions. I’ll leave most of it alone for now (I’m busy) but I’ll point this one thing out: Only you are speaking to mass murders as the problem. The rest of us are talking about all the thousands killed by your guns every year.

We’re coming for your guns, Mu. One way or another.

By: Mu

Mu — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:15:05 +0000

The 2nd amendment is not your issue, the 10th is. Gun ownership is a state controlled right, and all the federal government can do is make the manufacture/sale/transfer of guns more difficult via the commerce clause. Why do we still have private ownership of machine guns? Because all congress could do is put a tax stamp on the transfer, not confiscate existing guns (1934). This also introduced a registration requirement on the sly, later made explicit (1968). To further curb their spread they then made the registration of new guns impossible (1986). As that predictably drove the prices up, machine guns are now $10,000+ items, and usually properly secured against unauthorized access.
Now, you could probably get a similar procedure in place for assault rifles, but it would be decades before it makes a dent in the availability. And probably not change anything in regards to safety from massacre, a couple of pump-action hunting shotguns are cheaper than an AR15 and as effective.
As reports show that most mass murders are not spur-of-the moment things, you’re just forcing the perpetrators to get mildly more creative. As they are typically on the brighter side of the populations, that will not hold them back.
To totally disarm the US you only need to change the 2nd, 4th (so you can search for the guns), 5th (so there’s no due process) and 10th (see above). And getting that by 33 state legislatures, of which only 12 are democratic controlled, I’m indeed pessimistic.