First a word about our lovely press. If I hear one more reporter grovel and squirm about how we don’t really want to hurt the NRA or take away any gun rights or do anything unreasonable, no, no, we just want to assume there is a solution to the carnage that does not inconvenience any of the gun loving yahoos that watch our networks …. then I’m going to I just don’t know what. Reporters: Please leave open the possibility that a double digit percentage of Americans don’t care one whit how much restrictions there ends up being on guns. We just want the insanity to end, and if that means taking away all the guns, then, whatever. It was not our decision to make guns so available that they can be amassed in sufficient quantities to shoot over five hundred people in one sitting. We want results, we do not care, not one bit, who’s feelings are hurt.
But I digress.
You need to do this before any upcoming elections. Find out who on the ballot has a record of opposing guns vs. who has a record of supporting guns, and vote against the gun supporters and for the gun opposers.
I made a list of current members of the Minnesota US Congressional delegation, and put it at the top of the post, with relevant information. I also looked some details up from HERE and HERE.
In a recent rating of recent and current members of the Minnesota House delegation, the NRA gave Rick Nolan, Keith Ellison, and Betty McCollum the grade of “F” and none of these three lawmakers have taken money from them.
Collin Peterson took $2,500 bucks from the NRA, Michele Bachmann took $3,500, Erik Paulson took 2,250, John Kline $2,500, and Tim Walz took $2,000. They all got a rating of “A” from the NRA.
Notice that party lines are being crossed here.
During the recent congressional session, Congresspersons Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison supported zero bills that support guns, but have supported 14 gun control bills.
Richard Nolan has supported one gun control bill.
Al Franken has supported two gun control bills.
Amy Klobuchar has supported two gun control bills.
Those are the clear good guys in Congress from Minnesota. But you might ask why the great variation in number of bills?
Congressman Erik Paulsen has supported one gun rights bill and has not supported any gun control bills. Collin Peterson has supported three gun rights bills and zero gun control bills. Tom Emmer has supported zero gun control bills and five gun rights bills. John Kline has supported a whopping nine gun rights bills and zero gun control bills.
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The Vegas shooter’s guns were illegally obtained. Basic economics tells us that banning something doesn’t eliminate demand for it – it simply raises the cost to the point where only the most risk-preferential buy it. Ban guns, and you’re left with criminals and psychopaths with guns only, and on the occasion where a criminal can’t get a gun, they just drive a truck into a crowd instead.
The guns aren’t the problem.
Falsehood straight off the block;
Las Vegas shooter legally purchased weapons and passed all background checks, say Nevada gunshops
Yes they are:
America’s gun culture in eight charts
So the remainder of your argument rests on false premise.
Zach lookee here:
Yes, the guns really do matter.
Excellent finds, Lionel A. Thank you.
The “outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them” completely misses the point. We restrict many things — for example, I can’t just go and buy medical-grade insulin without a prescription. I can’t buy an F-16 and park it on my lawn, launching it from the local street. I can’t sell cigarettes to a 10-year-old.
When you place restrictions (legal ones) on buying things, yes, the less risk-averse will buy them. That’s the whole point. The number of people willing to go and shoot a large number of other people is rather small. If you make it that much harder for those people to get military-grade weapons whose sole purpose is to kill lots of other people very fast then the odds of any one of them doing it go down. Simple economics, as you say.
Also, “They will just drive a truck into a crowd” –well, you can murder anyone with just about anything. But there is a reason we do not have an epidemic of truck-murders (accidents are another matter entirely). It’s actually kind of hard to do it.
The same is true of knives and hand weapons. Killing someone via stabbing is hard. Using a sai is hard. Using a sword. To be an efficient killer with any of those means a lot of training hours. And you can only kill one person at a time.
Guns make killing easy, even accidental. Restricting people from buying them without proper training (in the specific weapon, by the way) and licensing, with renewals every so often, and insurance, would be a minimal move to reducing deaths. It’s no different than what we ask of auto owners.
I’d also be for asking people who want to carry guns do so openly. After all, if the point is to protect yourself, then carrying one openly would deter attackers. But that isn’t why people want to carry concealed weapons, then, if self-protection is the goal.
A huge part of the problem is people think guns work like they do in the movies, and that firefights look like they do in the movies. They don’t . In the confusion of hearing shots with sound bouncing off concrete you’d not be able to pinpoint the attacker’s location and pick him off (just ask any soldier who has been in an ambush). Also, machine gun bullets can go through a concrete cinder block, they don’t bounce nicely off the walls (in fact they generate craters and send hard fragments flying).
It’s a lot of Charles Bronson fantasists out there, and they go out armed, with weapons for which they are ill trained.
I suggest people look at gun laws in Canada, but that’s not asking for much – their gun death rates are only half of ours. Waiting period is 60 days. Baby steps should be the goal perhaps.
If you want to get overly ambitious, study Germany. My relatives the have hunting guns, but they are registered, and cops can check up on you at any time – you better have all of those weapons, and they better be in a gun safe or you are in trouble. Homicide rate 0.05 per 1000 (per year). In US 3.34. It’s true that criminals there still have millions of guns, but they are managing to kill allot less people. It is impractical right now to try to get as strict as Germany though.
Despite NRA preaching, I’m not scared of gun registration being a slippery slope, but I think in Canada only handguns and automatics get registered – the stuff designed to shoot humans.
There are tons of articles about how other countries do things is really my point.
rork #6:
A gun registration law would probably be constitutional (i.e. not violate the 2nd amendment). Having to report what guns you have doesn’t really infringe your right to keep and bear arms.
The gun safe angle may not be quite so easy. The Heller decision law at issue had a whole lot of restrictions on how the weapon was supposed to be kept in the house, trigger lock, ammo in a separate room, etc. and it was struck down on the grounds that if it takes you a long time to get the weapon and use it for self-defense it does infringe your right to “keep and bear arms”. On the other hand, you can buy a bio-metric gun safe now which you can open with a fingerprint or hand print and keep a loaded weapon close at hand – but locked up – so maybe a carefully crafted law would pass muster.
If we pass a gun registration law, it would have to include rifles, especially semi-automatic rifles – don’t you think? Especially after Las Vegas.
In Michigan it’s not that strange to see deer hunters with semi-autos with about 10 or 11 cartridges in the magazine but most people buy bolt action, and allot even single shot, cause they are more accurate, and you are only supposed to need one bullet. We do say, of hearing shots “two shots, maybe meat” (but that three shots means no meat) – but I’m not experienced at using bullets. I may not even be writing fluently – sorry. (I own a crazy number of bows though.) In Canada they limit you to just 5 rounds for semi-auto rifles, but that could be easily circumvented by a crazy person.
I think asking for semi-automatic registration is asking for too much right now. Again the public health folks concentrate on the numbers, and it’s the hand guns that do almost all the killing. I listen to them. I again warn I lack expertise.
rork #8:
I see your point of view. But it wasn’t handguns which were the problem in Las Vegas or Sandy Hook – so I would think if we were going to do a registration system in the USA, it would be for all firearms. Handguns, rifles and shotguns.
Whether this would pass in Congress is a different question. But it would probably be found constitutional.
What a good idea.
If it failed then Congress should be fired (‘scuse pun).
The NRA is a truly nasty organisation that needs its wings clipped and fast, Hocus-POTUS Trump or not.
If you still cannot grasp the essentials here RickA, which is that the Second Amendment as it stands should not be inviolate, then you need go out and shop for a moral compass and a logic finder.
PLEASE CONTINUE THIS INTERESTING DISCUSSION AT THIS POST:
https://gregladen.com/blog/2017/10/vote-down-the-guns/
THANKS
ou are clearly biased against the 2nd amendment and the NRA. Should we take away the first and 4th amendments too? My legally carried gun saved my life with out firing a shot. You can wait for the result of your 911 call (carrying away your body) if you want. The police are the first to say that they can not protect you or your family.”Please leave open the possibility that a double digit percentage of Americans don’t care one whit how much restrictions there ends up being on guns. We just want the insanity to end, and if that means taking away all the guns, then, whatever.” What do you base this statement upon????????????????? I will vote for any of the A grade people you mentioned.More laws will not/do not prevent crimes. Name one “mass shooting” that did not take place in a “gun free zone” How is this possible?” It was against the law. Maybe criminals, spooks, “terrorists” don’t obey laws.