All Things Second Amendment

[Gary K]

Classical liberalism from back then is divided in three today. Republican's, Democrat's, and libertarian's each retain distinctive bit's of it. "Land of liberty" was shorthand for land of classical liberalism.

I would have to disagree with a good share of your characterizations. One, I see nothing of classical liberalism in the Democrat party. They are now the party of totalitarianism. The party of big government as the be-all and end-all of solutions for the problems humanity faces. They stand for just the opposite of what men like Mills and Smith stood for and they are the ones responsible for so perverting the meaning of the word liberal. Two, The Republicans give lip service to classical liberalism but there are not many of the leading Republicans who actually vote and work ttowards the goals of classical liberalism. Three, There is some of the classical liberalism among the libertarians but there has also been an abandonment of Christian values by a considerable number of libertarians.

All in all, classical liberalism has pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth. It is so little known and understood that most conservatives are basically insulted if they are told they might be a classical liberal. And that is due to nothing more than the perversion of the meaning of the word by the totalitarian party, the Democrats.

 

[Yorzhik]

No, it means I don't repeatedly take paranoid fantasy seriously.

Nearly every major government has degraded into bondage for its people. To think ours won't go the same way eventually is a fantasy. Both George E. Mendenhall in The Tenth Generation and Alexander Fraser Tytler found no exceptions. Of their assessments, which stage do you think the USA is at? the early or latter stages?

It doesn't even matter to us little people whether it is the early or latter stages in the context of guns. When guns are taken they will never be given back. But it does make a difference to you elites. Do you know why?

I know we've outlawed guns before. I don't know of anyone going door to door. You don't have to for the reasons I've set out prior, including attrition, and the inability to use the weapon legally for any purpose, coupled with the chance to get something back for it.

So when someone defends themselves, for example a woman stops a man from raping her, with a gun they didn't want to sell in the buyback, you'd prosecute that woman?

I believe you can't just go into people's homes without due process attaching and probable cause. "They might have a gun they didn't turn in," isn't going to meet the standard any judge would find reasonable.

Why? You can advocate going door to door or you can keep doing what you're doing and adding to the body count.

How is it a close parallel? Try telling me without just repeating your belief. Logically, how is it close?

She has something that can be sold, but she doesn't want to. But if she is compensated anyway, then it is the same as the government compensating someone who doesn't want to sell their gun.

If you want to say that the buyback isn't forced, but that the government has made using that gun illegal, then the government owns that gun by necessity. Ownership requires that I control, and can sell, what I own.

That's a smaller sampling. I mean, you could look at part of Illinois and Chicago and make one point and at New York City and New York state and make another. Larger is better.

My sample is the same size, larger actually, but the resolution is finer. You've homogenized the data so you don't have to deal with the problem the data makes obvious. Where guns are numerous, and in more households, violence is about the same as the states and nations you cherry pick for your data. Where gun laws are many and guns per household is low, violent crime is high. Note that gun violence is high is certain places. It's not the guns.
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These statistical errors of homogenization and small sample size are errors you know about. But you'll never be shown where you're wrong because only people you consider your betters or peers could possibly do that.

In the broadest sense, but not in the sense of seizing, taking by force. So if you only mean buy backs are a mechanism by which the state incentivises owners to turn in the weapons, sure.

It's not a buyback. It's making the guns illegal and saying the buyback makes it OK to make them illegal.

I don't

You say it's a paranoid fantasy. That's the same as saying "it could never happen here".

In order, untrue and it doesn't.

That's what an elitist would say.

My argument isn't an appeal to emotion

You separate the few deaths from a few crazy people from the majority of deaths in the country. But that is such a small sample size that there is no way to measure the impact of taking guns from millions of innocent people. All you have left is an appeal to emotion.

Beyond that, if you weren't appealing to emotion you'd try and solve the bigger problem of over 10,000 homicides per year first. Taking everyone's guns will only make that problem worse.

Still complete nonsense for the reasons offered the first time you proffered it a long time ago.

My proposal stops gangs. That's a lot of black dots. While your proposal stops, maybe, some of the deaths shown by the red dots. Only an elitist would say that's nonsense.
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I didn't see me make a percentage claim in the quote, though I saw me challenging you to prove your proffer on a percentage.

You said, and I quote, "a small percentage". Thus, you *did* make a percentage claim, but vague enough to backtrack when you needed to. I offered to compare your evidence to mine, but you stick your nose in the air.

My evidence is the percentage of gun types gun makers have been making for a long time.

The question was how would the argument be different when mass murderers use revolvers, and/or pump action shotguns, and/or small capacity magazines with a semi auto.

A rifle is more accurate at distance. It's hard for most people to be very accurate with handguns outside of a small range, even when they're calm. Shotguns tend to carry between six to ten rounds before they need to be reloaded and can't be as easily handled as rifles, are more unwieldly absent a shortening that would impact accuracy.

You ignored the question. Let's make it clearer; when crazy people today continue to kill mass numbers of people (you don't think someone could kill 4 people with a pump shot gun, bolt or lever gun?), will you continue to just live with those deaths and adding to the body count? If someone were to propose taking guns that shoot more than one bullet per reload how would the argument be different?

The guns that *you* own can cause a great deal of death very fast.

Not really. Why do you believe that?

Are you saying you only own breech loaders? You know, even they can deal death very fast. Or is your definition of "very fast" confined to guns faster than what you own? Why is that the definition of "very fast"?

Rather, I note that the sort of killing fields we've seen a number of venues transformed into were the product of a weapon that hasn't been a part of our landscape, as gun owners, for most of our history, and that we can and have met every legal purpose without them. Given how they're being used, we should do that again.

The vetting on whether those guns are "too dangerous" was already done when they were invented. They were invented and within reach of the masses long before we had a problem with crazy people killing masses for seemingly no reason. They aren't the problem.

I'm not projecting a fantasy by noting one. The primary question to distinguish the reasonable from the other is simple enough, how likely is the fear/concern? How often have we seen result X in the same circumstances. And when you're weighing a known harm with a hypothetical and potential need or harm the latter should be compelling and rooted in more than possibility.

Saying "it's a paranoid fantasy" is the same as saying "it could never happen here".

Nearly every major government has degraded into bondage for its people. To think ours won't go the same way eventually is a fantasy. Both George E. Mendenhall in The Tenth Generation and Alexander Fraser Tytler found no exceptions.

We had all the freedom before those guns than we have with them.

And taking guns and registering every gun takes a lot of freedom from innocent people. How does being less free stop crazy people?

The data doesn't hold true for states or nations.

That's because the data is homogenized. We have better data and it shows more guns equals less violence.

Sure, let's get into it. How many deaths from mass murderers are you willing to tolerate to keep your more-than-breach-loading guns?

The weapons I own wouldn't be very effective for mass murders, certainly not what we've been seeing in Dayton and other places.

So when a crazy person kills a bunch of people with a lever action rifle how will the argument be different since a lever action rifle can kill people a lot faster than a breech loader can. Or don't you think someone can kill 4 people with a lever gun?

The question remains: How many deaths from mass murderers are you willing to tolerate to keep your more-than-breech-loading guns?

Outside of ARs, most deaths by weapons come from handguns. A great deal of that is suicide, which is a strong argument for supporting mental health screening and measures in relation to gun ownership. Beyond suicide you're talking about weapons used in the furtherance of criminal activity, largely gang related. The weapons I own wouldn't be very effective for mass murders, certainly not what we've been seeing in Dayton and other places.

The question for me is balancing the reasonable exercise of the right, which can accomplish any number of legal acts, with the danger of the instruments permitted for those purposes. I think ARs cross the line where the benefit is outweighed by the risk they pose to public safety, demonstrably. People weren't doing that with lever action Winchesters and for good reason, Carrying capacity, the time it takes to chamber, aim, fire, and chamber the next round, etc.

Only people involved with the Clinton's commit suicide with more than one bullet. That's a joke, BTW. A world where there are only breech loaders allowed is perfect for suicides. The point is that your proposal won't slow down suicide by gun unless you are willing to admit it's not the guns.

It's identical with other forms of violence. It's not the guns.

No, because the argument has never been we should reduce the danger from every firearm without regard for the good those same weapons can accomplish, even before we get to the right to possess them. Self-defense, hunting, recreation, there are any number of legal activities that are and should be permissible exercise and they can, all of them, be accomplished without the use of ARs. Without semi-automatics, comes to it, and with magazines that I'd restrict to no more than six shots if we keep semi-automatics outside of ARs. Ideally I'd five plus one in the chamber clips. With some rifles and shotguns that hold between 10 to as much as 17 rounds, modifications or stringent regulations relating to their possession and use would be reasonable.

All the things you propose can be accomplished with breech loaders. All your fancy exceptions just adds to the body count.

You're the elitist, since you think you know more. So that's funny right here.

Yeah, laughing at the little people is one of the favorite things elitists do. And knowing more because I use all the data isn't elitist, but ignoring data like you do is.

You're wrong about Braddock. He was a great deal more devious and smarter than your average loser mass murderer.

I don't think it took much intelligence to do what he did.

Paddock didn't apparently care for us to know. No manifesto or note. Whatever was in his mind appears to have stayed there.

You propose we take innocent people's property to stop a crazy person without knowing what happened and why. Just assume he was stupid and did what he did because innocent people made it so easy for him? Remember, once guns are taken they will never be returned.

That's a really bad way to make a sweeping set of laws. But elitists don't mind using the little people as guinea pigs.

 

[Town Heretic]

Nearly every major government has degraded into bondage for its people.

Every modern democracy is still standing and are going concerns. Also, we built revolution into our code, which is another way to stabilize governments. Most of the one's you're noting began with bondage. Kings and dictators. That sort of thing.

To think ours won't go the same way eventually is a fantasy.

Too broad. Eventually? That can mean a thousand years.

Meanwhile, to believe it's a concern for us and our foreseeable posterity is paranoid and defeatist.

It doesn't even matter to us little people whether it is the early or latter stages in the context of guns. When guns are taken they will never be given back. But it does make a difference to you elites. Do you know why?

Again, you're as much an elitist as anyone on this board, because the only distinction between you and the next fellow is what you want to see done, or don't. Maybe you fool yourself, believe that you can judge the person you're calling a judge without seeing the inevitable hypocrisy...who knows.

So when someone defends themselves, for example a woman stops a man from raping her, with a gun they didn't want to sell in the buyback, you'd prosecute that woman?

Or a prosecutor, having discretion, would likely confiscate the weapon and reduce charges. Because that's a fairly horrific scenario and he can do that, just as he could consider breaking the law to rush your child to a hospital. Mostly though, people who speed and get caught aren't doing that.

Why?

I literally just told you why. We have due process. You can't and shouldn't get to enter someone's home on the chance that they might be breaking a law. You have to have probable cause. Because without it your right to the exclusive, quiet enjoyment of your property can't and shouldn't be interrupted by the state. Probably cause is foundational to our system of justice.

On odd parallels...

She has something that can be sold, but she doesn't want to. But if she is compensated anyway, then it is the same as the government compensating someone who doesn't want to sell their gun.

Okay...so you're comparing a woman selling herself reluctantly to the government proffering payment for guns you don't want to surrender. You called it a close parallel. It only parallels in the reluctance. That's why I questioned its value.

If you want to say that the buyback isn't forced

It's not a matter of wanting. You can just turn the thing in, or destroy it. You won't be forced to accept payment, but why wouldn't you want the compensation?

but that the government has made using that gun illegal, then the government owns that gun by necessity.

Doesn't follow by necessity. All that's necessary is that you no longer possess it. Supra.

Ownership requires that I control, and can sell, what I own.

Not always true, but in this case, yes. And compensation is offered in the name of equity and fairness. If the state requires your land for a right of way you should be paid for it. And if the state requires you to give up some other property to promote a legitimate state interest it should compensate you.

My sample is the same size, larger actually, but the resolution is finer. You've homogenized the data so you don't have to deal with the problem the data makes obvious.

No, your sample is much smaller and cherry picked to promote a point that a larger database won't support.

Where guns are numerous, and in more households

Again, we don't have gun registration here, so we can only really guess who has what. Now in countries where there is mandatory registration, our European cousins, we know who has what. We also know that the laws in those states promote a dramatically safer society in terms of homicide and gun violence.

It's not a buyback. It's making the guns illegal and saying the buyback makes it OK to make them illegal.

No, it's a buyback because the guns are literally being bought back by the state. What makes it OK, or preferable is the impact of laws ending this sort of weapon's easy access to the stream of commerce on mass shootings and public safety.

You say it's a paranoid fantasy. That's the same as saying "it could never happen here".

No. See, conspiracy theorists rely on open ended paranoia, because "never" is like your earlier use of "eventually." It takes in so much unreckonable time that it forces the reasonable person to take an unreasonable position because of that unreasonable foundation.

You separate the few deaths from a few crazy people from the majority of deaths in the country.

And now you distort the other way. A "few deaths."

Last year it was over 500 deaths and more than double that wounded. And that's without considering the trauma of that on the survivors, on the communities where these take place. And I separate it because it's something we can do something about impacting, now, in this moment.

Beyond that, if you weren't appealing to emotion you'd try and solve the bigger problem of over 10,000 homicides per year first. Taking everyone's guns will only make that problem worse.

Most of the gun deaths are from suicide. I'm all for ramping up our support for mental health professionals and measures in relation to gun ownership. And isolating on a thing with precedent that we can accomplish in the here and now to positive effect isn't appealing to emotion any more than you're appealing to reason with paranoid, open ended fantasy.

You said, and I quote, "a small percentage".

It helps if you actually quote me, not just repeat a thing with quotation marks. That only really shows that you believe I did.

That said, and understanding that a lack of registration laws make it a difficult guess, Congress did a report on it in 2012 and estimated it to be around 3% of gun owners. Even if that's doubled it wouldn't begin to be in common use. The AG of Maryland used it in arguing for restrictions.

My evidence is the percentage of gun types gun makers have been making for a long time.

The problem with that is that a lot of those guns are in police departments and the hands of collectors. Otherwise, the rise in the popularity of the gun has really been a recent development, in part due to a prior ban. You'll see gun companies trying their hardest to promote it though, because they know they don't have the numbers and the clock is ticking.

You ignored the question. Let's make it clearer; when crazy people today continue to kill mass numbers of people (you don't think someone could kill 4 people with a pump shot gun, bolt or lever gun?), will you continue to just live with those deaths and adding to the body count? If someone were to propose taking guns that shoot more than one bullet per reload how would the argument be different?

I'm not ignoring the question. You're ignoring the context. It's never been an all of nothing approach. It's always been and I've always argued for a rational balancing of interests, in approaching what technology has done to the landscape.

There's just no rational argument behind support for ARs. They're unusual, dangerous, uncommon, and a threat to our security. They haven't been a part of our exercise of the right for most of the life of our nation, nor had a part for the overwhelming number of gun owners in this country. And given what we've learned about their misuse and our inability to address it (see: Dayton) it's time to put an end to them and to large capacity magazines as well.

Are you saying you only own breech loaders? You know, even they can deal death very fast. Or is your definition of "very fast" confined to guns faster than what you own? Why is that the definition of "very fast"?

Well, when all this began bump stocks were in play that transformed these into de facto submachine guns. But even as they sit these weapons are much faster than a bolt action rifle and in combination with large capacity magazines it makes them a thing a Winchester couldn't begin to match. When a weapon fires as fast as you can pull the trigger and has a hundred rounds waiting to be spent before you have to reload it's a threat to public safety that can't be reasonably justified.

The vetting on whether those guns are "too dangerous" was already done when they were invented. They were invented and within reach of the masses long before we had a problem with crazy people killing masses for seemingly no reason. They aren't the problem.

The problem is the ease with which these specific weapons and accoutrements accomplish killing large numbers of people in very narrow windows of time.

And taking guns and registering every gun takes a lot of freedom from innocent people.

No, it doesn't. We register our cars. Does it impact our ability to use them? And some guns just don't belong in the hands of people who aren't in uniform and the service that requires them, supra.

How does being less free stop crazy people?

So the premise is junk, but what taking easy access to these weapons does is make it harder to get and as a consequence less likely they'll be used to cause mass murder in our churches, mosques, synagogues, concert halls, schoolyards, etc.

That's because the data is homogenized. We have better data and it shows more guns equals less violence.

Actually, what we know is that every nation with stronger gun laws is safer and that while we have more of the worlds guns we're far less safe than those European democracies I've noted, all of which have cities, hinterlands, poor people, criminals, video games, etc.

So when a crazy person kills a bunch of people with a lever action rifle how will the argument be different since a lever action rifle can kill people a lot faster than a breech loader can. Or don't you think someone can kill 4 people with a lever gun?

As I said the last time you ignored it, "The question for me is balancing the reasonable exercise of the right, which can accomplish any number of legal acts, with the danger of the instruments permitted for those purposes. I think ARs cross the line where the benefit is outweighed by the risk they pose to public safety, demonstrably. People weren't doing that with lever action Winchesters and for good reason, Carrying capacity, the time it takes to chamber, aim, fire, and chamber the next round, etc."

So to cut off your ongoing domino theory, we have a right to bear arms. Risk will come with that right. We may accidentally shoot ourselves or someone else. We may kill ourselves or someone else. We may shoot an endangered member of a species with a rifle meant for legal sport, and on and on. Some risk is unavoidable if we are to maintain a right that permits all sorts of beneficial uses, from self-defense to hunting, to purely recreational enjoyment. The AR doesn't belong in that group for the reasons noted prior.

Yeah, laughing at the little people is one of the favorite things elitists do.

Everyone enjoys a laugh. I enjoy laughing at you trying to repeatedly slap the elitist label on people you're judging yourself superior to.

You propose we take innocent people's property to stop a crazy person without knowing what happened and why.

No, I propose we outlaw a gun and magazines that are a needless risk to public safety. I oppose weapons whose legitimate tasks can be had with others that lack its singular distinction of being capable of killing a large number of people in a few breaths.

Most people have never owned one. Most of the life of our nation the exercise of the right did not entail them. What they can do that makes them different is not a thing anyone should desire, so their elimination will cost us nothing meaningful, while their possession continues to cost us a great deal, from Sandy Hook to the next schoolyard or church, or public gathering where we'll count the dead.

 

[Stripe]

Every modern democracy is still standing and are going concerns.

Opens with another logical fallacy. Still expects to be taken seriously.

 

[Town Heretic]

Opens with another logical fallacy. Still expects to be taken seriously.

Wades back in with an unsupported declaration. Never was taken seriously.


Meanwhile, the president waited just long enough for the initial public reaction to quiet a bit after the last couple of mass murders by AR before walking back his declaration about registration, following a visit with the unprincipal's office of the NRA.

Another thing to remember come election time.

 

[Stripe]

Unsupported declaration.

And yet, there it is: A straw man if ever there was one.

Are you looking to collect the whole set?

 

[ok doser]

Opens with another logical fallacy. Still expects to be taken seriously.

Logical fallacies are fun!

 

[ok doser]

And yes, I have stopped beating my wife.

 

[rocketman]

And yet, there it is: A straw man if ever there was one.

Are you looking to collect the whole set?

Haven't been around in a while, log in and this is the first post I see...Too funny, I do miss the humor.:thumb:

 

[Town Heretic]

And yet, there it is: A straw man if ever there was one.

Then just imagine how easy that would be to demonstrate...

Let's all imagine it, apparently. lain:

For those playing at home the last time he tried to step past the declarative barrier it ended in:

Of course it was.
Making out that you said this instead of what you actually did is rather dishonest. Why not just retract the implied accusation and be done with it.

Actually I quoted myself exactly. Here it is again with emphasis on the parts that make you look goofier than usual.

"If we model our laws after established, superior examples that abound in other Western Industrial Democracies, we can share something else with them: a nation made safer from gun violence."

Examples, meaning more than one. Democracies, meaning more than one.

Look, I get you didn't really think it through, well, mostly. I mean even with that bias you realized it when you noted me talking to JR about other options, but you were so intent on seeing something that wasn't there you had to pretend I didn't see what I was literally speaking to...which is pretty darn sad, even for you Stripe.

The fuller rebuttal can be had (much like Stripe) by simply following the link back.

:cheers:

 

[Stripe]

Haven't been around in a while, log in and this is the first post I see...Too funny, I do miss the humor.:thumb:

I have my moments.

Where ya been?

 

[rocketman]

I have my moments.

Oh Yea...:chuckle:

Where ya been?

Been pretty busy with the loss of my career then a move to another one, than a move back to another...so basically really busy & disconnected. Good to drop in for awhile though, plenty of fresh meat to feed on. :chuckle:

 

[Stripe]

Loss of my career.

:shocked:

Really busy & disconnected.

What you doing now?

Good to drop in for awhile though, plenty of fresh meat to feed on. :chuckle:

:up:

 

[rocketman]

What you doing now?

Well, I am still in aerospace but, just working the pointy end now...satellite end. It is not as exciting as launching them but, it pays the bills. Pretty funny though the very company that laid me off may be wanting me back for more money...we will see, I really loved that old job, I might take them up on it.

:up:

Indeed!

 

[ok doser]

Great to see you rocketdude, keeping you in my prayers:thumb:

 

[Stripe]

Well, I am still in aerospace but, just working the pointy end now...satellite end. It is not as exciting as launching them but, it pays the bills. Pretty funny though the very company that laid me off may be wanting me back for more money...we will see, I really loved that old job, I might take them up on it.



Indeed!

Did yous launch our Formosat constellation?

 

[Stripe]

I might take them up on it.

Any chance of them taking you up?

 

[rocketman]

Did yous launch our Formosat constellation?

No, I believe that was Spacex that launched the most recent of the Formosat stuff.

 

[rocketman]

Any chance of them taking you up?

wish I could take a ride but, highly unlikely, although the U.S. should be doing manned launch again next year. :BRAVO:

 

[Yorzhik]

Every modern democracy is still standing and are going concerns.

Tytler focused on Athenian democracy. He shows how it died internally before it died externally. Both authors studied all democracies and republics. They all decayed.

You might say, "MODERN democracy is different!". But we see the same symptoms from the same human nature as all the democracies (and republics) that have come before us. Why is doing the same thing going to turn out differently this time?

Too broad. Eventually? That can mean a thousand years.

Could be. But I doubt it based on the symptoms of decay present. Can you not see those symptoms from your ivory tower?

Don't forget, if guns are ever taken, they are never given back. Even for a thousand years. But if we have those guns when it does happen, even in 1000 years, then there will be less bloodshed.

Again, you're as much an elitist as anyone on this board, because the only distinction between you and the next fellow is what you want to see done, or don't.

You don't understand what an elitist is. A fish can't tell it is in water, either, for an analogous reason.

Maybe you fool yourself, believe that you can judge the person you're calling a judge without seeing the inevitable hypocrisy...who knows.

And there it is. An elitist isn't defined as someone who judges. It's someone who won't listen to reasonable arguments people he believes to be his lessors. Such as doubling down when you were shown to have weak statistics.

Or a prosecutor, having discretion, would likely confiscate the weapon and reduce charges. Because that's a fairly horrific scenario and he can do that, just as he could consider breaking the law to rush your child to a hospital. Mostly though, people who speed and get caught aren't doing that.

Great, so if we all keep our guns and use them only for self defense you will take the punishment for us if the prosecutor doesn't use his discretion. Excuse me if I'm not reassured.

I literally just told you why. We have due process. You can't and shouldn't get to enter someone's home on the chance that they might be breaking a law. You have to have probable cause. Because without it your right to the exclusive, quiet enjoyment of your property can't and shouldn't be interrupted by the state.

Unless the quiet enjoyment of someone's property is declared illegal. Then it should be interrupted by the state in order to save lives. I'm just following your logic.

And also, wherever guns are registered the authorities are allowed to go into homes according to your logic, because they will have probable cause. Depending on the gun that presently would include 6 states and DC.

Okay...so you're comparing a woman selling herself reluctantly

No. I said rape. Try again.

It's not a matter of wanting. You can just turn the thing in, or destroy it. You won't be forced to accept payment, but why wouldn't you want the compensation?

In that case that woman can avoid rape by accepting the money.

that the government has made using that gun illegal, then the government owns that gun by necessity.

Doesn't follow by necessity. All that's necessary is that you no longer possess it.

You contradict yourself. By taking control of a thing the government has the right to take possession of it.

Not always true, but in this case, yes. And compensation is offered in the name of equity and fairness. If the state requires your land for a right of way you should be paid for it. And if the state requires you to give up some other property to promote a legitimate state interest it should compensate you.

And compensation for rape becomes prostitution in the name of equity and fairness.

No, your sample is much smaller and cherry picked to promote a point that a larger database won't support.

No, my higher resolution data is at least as large as your low resolution data. Seems like you are ignoring the data I presented, all rural and urban areas, of which Chicago is just a small piece. Even so, this one city, typical of all the rest, puts the lie to your assertion that states are homogenous in the context of violence when criminal violence is actually all bunched up in certain areas... that have a lot of gang activity :think: ... but you want to go after all the people not in those crime areas... :think:
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Where guns are numerous, and in more households

Again, we don't have gun registration here, so we can only really guess who has what.

We estimate close enough.

Now in countries where there is mandatory registration, our European cousins, we know who has what. We also know that the laws in those states promote a dramatically safer society in terms of homicide and gun violence.

And when all guns are registered, it introduces probable cause. Brilliant.

No, it's a buyback because the guns are literally being bought back by the state. What makes it OK, or preferable is the impact of laws ending this sort of weapon's easy access to the stream of commerce on mass shootings and public safety.

It *might* reduce some of the red dots, but it will make the black dots worse.
View attachment 26875

No. See, conspiracy theorists rely on open ended paranoia, because "never" is like your earlier use of "eventually." It takes in so much unreckonable time that it forces the reasonable person to take an unreasonable position because of that unreasonable foundation.

It's not a conspiracy, it's human nature. All democracies and republics fall from within in about 200 years (Tytler) or about 300 years/ten generations (Mendenhall).

But, again, it doesn't matter. Once guns are gone, they will never be given back even if the data shows taking the guns didn't slow down criminal violence. And why is that? It's because politicians want a lack of guns just in case they need to turn tyrannical. Even if they have a big army and lots of cops that can roll over a rebellion, for some reason they find the need to take guns first... odd that.

And now you distort the other way. A "few deaths."

Last year it was over 500 deaths and more than double that wounded. And that's without considering the trauma of that on the survivors, on the communities where these take place. And I separate it because it's something we can do something about impacting, now, in this moment.

Where do you get your numbers? Last year it was 57 dead and 50 injured. Are you counting incidents with causes other than crazy people? If you are, you're doing it wrong. If you want to count deaths by other causes than crazy, then we can have a much greater impact by solving those causes before assaulting innocent people that own a thing.

Further, there are over 10,000 homicides a year omitting suicides. A wise person would reduce that number first before he did a politically irreversible act against innocent people.

Most of the gun deaths are from suicide. I'm all for ramping up our support for mental health professionals and measures in relation to gun ownership.

Here you are admitting it's not the guns.

And isolating on a thing with precedent that we can accomplish in the here and now to positive effect isn't appealing to emotion

You've yet to show any surety of a positive effect. Taking innocent peoples property in hopes of reducing the red dots and increasing the black dots is a negative effect to everyone but an elite. Your homogenized stats being wrong leaves you with only emotional appeal.

any more than you're appealing to reason with paranoid, open ended fantasy.

Not only will there be more death when you take away innocent people's guns used for defense, but there is much more evidence of societal breakdown than the contrary since your counter argument rests entirely on your high brow opinion.

It helps if you actually quote me, not just repeat a thing with quotation marks. That only really shows that you believe I did.

You said the guns you were confiscating were a small percentage. But semi-autos, by conservative estimates, are 40%-60% of guns in circulation. If you want to claim you are only confiscating AR or AK style guns, then whatever defines them will be changed to whatever semi-auto is allowed. For instance, during the AWB the pistol grip was used as an identity feature on AKs. Changing to a standard stock, or selling with no stock and leaving that to the customer to come up with their own, was a simple fix to that tyrannical move and rifle sales actually increased. These rifles had the same functionality of any other AK or any other magazine fed semi-auto rifle.

Which brings up your high-cap magazine ban. Since magazines are trivial to store, easy to forget about, and can even be 3D printed, it puts a large burden on innocent people.

Jesus talked about people like you when He said, "They pile heavy burdens on people's shoulders and won't lift a finger to help."

That said, and understanding that a lack of registration laws make it a difficult guess,

It's not that hard. Between surveys and looking at what has been manufactured we have a close enough estimate. All registration does is introduce probable cause.

Congress did a report on it in 2012 and estimated it to be around 3% of gun owners. Even if that's doubled it wouldn't begin to be in common use. The AG of Maryland used it in arguing for restrictions.

So you aren't talking about semi-autos? You realize that an AR and AK are the same as any other magazine fed semi-auto, right?

Beyond that, as soon as there is another mass shooting, with let's say, a shotgun like the one used in the naval yard shooting, then we are back with your same argument to reduce innocent people down to breech loaders.

The problem with that is that a lot of those guns are in police departments and the hands of collectors. Otherwise, the rise in the popularity of the gun has really been a recent development, in part due to a prior ban. You'll see gun companies trying their hardest to promote it though, because they know they don't have the numbers and the clock is ticking.

Since you admit the clock is ticking on innocent people, you should probably stop calling respected scholars like Tytler and Mendenhall paranoid fanatics.

You ignored the question... If someone were to propose taking guns that shoot more than one bullet per reload how would the argument be different?

I'm not ignoring the question. You're ignoring the context. It's never been an all of nothing approach. It's always been and I've always argued for a rational balancing of interests, in approaching what technology has done to the landscape.

So you are saying the context is your personal opinion on what is "fast". But the argument is still the same if your opinion changes. Someone could use, say, a pump action shotgun and shoot 8 people in 4 minutes... that's fast. How is your argument different?

There's just no rational argument behind support for ARs. They're unusual, dangerous, uncommon, and a threat to our security. They haven't been a part of our exercise of the right for most of the life of our nation, nor had a part for the overwhelming number of gun owners in this country. And given what we've learned about their misuse and our inability to address it (see: Dayton) it's time to put an end to them and to large capacity magazines as well.

Also, are you now saying you are only talking about confiscating the AR style rifles? You realize that is irrational, and such a proposal can only rely on emotion to implement don't you? You realize that the AR is the same as any other magazine fed semi-auto? And that magazines can be 3D printed? 3D printed magazines means that criminals will have the high-cap magazines but innocent people won't.

Well, when all this began bump stocks were in play that transformed these into de facto submachine guns. But even as they sit these weapons are much faster than a bolt action rifle and in combination with large capacity magazines it makes them a thing a Winchester couldn't begin to match. When a weapon fires as fast as you can pull the trigger and has a hundred rounds waiting to be spent before you have to reload it's a threat to public safety that can't be reasonably justified.

You realize that bump stocks can now be 3D printed? Meaning criminals get them but innocent people are turned into criminals who have them.

Beyond that, you still have to answer the question about how fast is fast. How will the same argument you're using be different if, let's say, a person with a pump shotgun shoots 8 people in 4 minutes?

The problem is the ease with which these specific weapons and accoutrements accomplish killing large numbers of people in very narrow windows of time.

Beyond your opinion, what is the objective measure of how easy "ease" is?

No, it doesn't. We register our cars. Does it impact our ability to use them? And some guns just don't belong in the hands of people who aren't in uniform and the service that requires them, supra.

Guns that don't belong in the public will be considered dangerous. If the government knows in who's house a dangerous thing is, they have an obligation to go into the house to get it. That will be important when your argument is used to get any gun that shoots more than 1 round per reload after your argument is used when the next crazy person does a mass killing.

How does being less free stop crazy people?

So the premise is junk, but what taking easy access to these weapons does is make it harder to get and as a consequence less likely they'll be used to cause mass murder in our churches, mosques, synagogues, concert halls, schoolyards, etc.

[/quote]
You didn't demonstrate anything wrong with the premise, you just used an emotional argument and restated your claim.

The question remains. How does taking guns from innocent people stop crazy people?

Actually, what we know is that every nation with stronger gun laws is safer and that while we have more of the worlds guns we're far less safe than those European democracies I've noted, all of which have cities, hinterlands, poor people, criminals, video games, etc.

Actually, because the data is homogenized it is misleading. We have better data and it shows more guns equals less violent crime. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in previous posts, but you ignore the data.

So when a crazy person kills a bunch of people with a lever action rifle how will the argument be different since a lever action rifle can kill people a lot faster than a breech loader can. Or don't you think someone can kill 4 people with a lever gun?

As I said the last time you ignored it, "The question for me is balancing the reasonable exercise of the right, which can accomplish any number of legal acts, with the danger of the instruments permitted for those purposes. I think ARs cross the line where the benefit is outweighed by the risk they pose to public safety, demonstrably. People weren't doing that with lever action Winchesters and for good reason, Carrying capacity, the time it takes to chamber, aim, fire, and chamber the next round, etc."
So to cut off your ongoing domino theory, we have a right to bear arms. Risk will come with that right. We may accidentally shoot ourselves or someone else. We may kill ourselves or someone else. We may shoot an endangered member of a species with a rifle meant for legal sport, and on and on. Some risk is unavoidable if we are to maintain a right that permits all sorts of beneficial uses, from self-defense to hunting, to purely recreational enjoyment. The AR doesn't belong in that group for the reasons noted prior.

Not only does your arbitrary line on what is reasonable change the argument for further gun confiscation, but how much risk that comes with the right is just as arbitrary. You still haven't shown how the same argument you're using will be different if, let's say, a person with a pump shotgun shoots 8 people in 4 minutes?

Yeah, laughing at the little people is one of the favorite things elitists do.

Everyone enjoys a laugh.

Sure, but you laughing at little people is mean.

I enjoy laughing at you trying to repeatedly slap the elitist label on people you're judging yourself superior to.

Elitists can be wrong. You've been shown you're wrong on the stats you use to try and bolster your argument. The difference is that I consider your argument and weigh it against my own while you ignore arguments from people you consider your lessors.

No, I propose we outlaw a gun and magazines that are a needless risk to public safety. I oppose weapons whose legitimate tasks can be had with others that lack its singular distinction of being capable of killing a large number of people in a few breaths.

Most people have never owned one. Most of the life of our nation the exercise of the right did not entail them. What they can do that makes them different is not a thing anyone should desire, so their elimination will cost us nothing meaningful, while their possession continues to cost us a great deal, from Sandy Hook to the next schoolyard or church, or public gathering where we'll count the dead.

Your claim that semi-autos are a needless risk to public safety has been shown to be wrong according to the data. Your opinion laden declarations to the contrary are a further indictment of the weakness of your argument.