Firearms proposal from da Basement

[JMHawkins]

Attitude to government. It seems there is a massive difference here between USA and Europe. You seem to see government as something imposed upon you to be kept as small as possible and not as something useful. In Europe government is generally seen as the servant of the population...

 

Well, yes. America was largely populated by people who weren't happy with the, ah, "service" provided by European governments. They figured they could do better on their own.

 

[Callooh! Callay!1428010939]

"The Semiauto ban won't work unless you collect everything that has been legally purchased. Then it probably won't make a difference in my lifetime and maybe my childrens life time, till all of the ones that have been horded away by the nutters are stolen, broken or turned in my families after they have passed away."

 

Yea, like ones "horded" away by "nutters" that use semi-automatic shotguns at Boy Scout Shotgun ranges in accordance with the G2SS.

[Basementdweller]

Interesting, never seen a semiauto being used at a scout camp. One camp that I have attended had a couple browning over and unders, the other had a mossberg pump that they loaded a single round per clay.

[RememberSchiff]

IMO, a gas operated, semi-auto shotgun like a Remington 1100 is a great choice for young (smaller stature) beginner shooters as those shotguns generally have the least recoil.

 

Start a new shooter with a big kick firearm and they develop bad habits like flinch and trigger jerk.

 

My $0.02(This message has been edited by RememberSchiff)

[DeanRx]

Basement-

 

I understand your position on the issue... However, what we are really talking about is how best to avoid mass shooting int he future, right? I'm not sure how you make a dent without having mental health at the forefront (even more so than firearms restrictions).

 

Its a sick comment on society, but we really don't CARE or really think we can do anything about gun violence with regards to drug trade, domestic violence, or suicide, do we? I sure don't.

 

My main concern is we establish plans on how best to avoid someone taking out a bus-load of children along with themselves when they decide to go out in a "blaze of glory". So how do you do that?

 

1) Make hard targets. Do a better job with physical security and 'shelter in place' in ALL public places, especially schools.

 

2) Set up ways to ID and intervene with potential nut-jobs BEFORE they build up their stock-pile and their plan. (we aren't doing ANY of this right now... haven't heard any talk of it either from ANYONE at the national level on either side of the debate)

 

3) Reasonable background checks and close loopholes to stop purchases by folks who (by law) should not be allowed to purchase.

 

4) Train, train, train... responsible ownership. Sandy Hook happened for ONE reason only. A person (who has paid with their life) thought it was OK to combine her weapons cache (obviously not correctly secured - or the kid had access) with a mentally handicapped man-child living with her.

 

5) Look at ways to avoid desensitization of our youth towards violence. You could wrtie pages ont his one alone.

 

I don't know HOW you can have a rational discussion on the topic without acknowledging that mental health intervention and responsible ownership are not the two largest issues at hand? You can debate all day what those two steps should look like, but these with physical security are the best chance we have at not seeing a repeat incident.

 

As for Beavah - I honestly don't know WHY someone with the means should not be allowed to buy a tank or a joint strike force aircraft in this country. If you can afford it, you have no legal barrier to purchasing it (i.e. convicted of a felony. etc...), adn you can safely maintain it and keep comman and control of it... it should be on the open market. I've never understood WHY its OK for our government to be able to sell these types of things to other countries governments, yet keep them from its own citizens? If Bill Gates wants an F-15, who are we to say he can't have it?

 

At the time the constitution was inacted - the founding fathers certainly envisioned citizens owning and operating the same muskets and cannons that were availible to governmental armies. The right to bear arms has been diluted since day one, IMHO.

 

Dean

[CalicoPenn]

At the time of the enactment of the Constitution, the founding fathers envisioned that the people would be called upon as necessary to defend their state, or their country, from the tyranny of other states and other countries as there would be no standing army and the people themselves would need to be armed and ready as its defensive force.

 

As all nation builders are, the founding fathers were blind to the idea that they themselves, or the country they founded, could one day be the tyrant or oppressor - they were, in fact, building a more perfect nation - and a more perfect nation wouldn't oppress their own people now, would they? Their soaring rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence was aimed at a very specific target, and despite popular contemporary notions, they never thought that there would ever be a need to use it against themselves and the more perfect nation they were striving to build. Had they thought as much, they would have provided a constitutional means for states to secede from the nation, something they did not do.

[Beavah]

As for Beavah - I honestly don't know WHY someone with the means should not be allowed to buy a tank or a joint strike force aircraft in this country. If you can afford it, you have no legal barrier to purchasing it (i.e. convicted of a felony. etc...), adn you can safely maintain it and keep comman and control of it... it should be on the open market. I've never understood WHY its OK for our government to be able to sell these types of things to other countries governments, yet keep them from its own citizens? If Bill Gates wants an F-15, who are we to say he can't have it?

 

Yah, OK! That's at least logical and consistent, DeanRx. What I was objectin' to was da folks who weren't makin' logical and consistent arguments.

 

I think what we face is that there will always be some small percentage of da population who aren't good citizens, eh? Criminals, nutjobs, mentally unstable, whatever. And there's some additional small percentage of the time when a fair number of ordinary good citizens are experiencin' too much stress in their lives and lose it in some way or another. Get careless, get too angry, make errors of judgment, consider suicide, whatever.

 

On the American frontier, when one of those folks went off, they poached a few birds or shot a neighbor's cow or blew a hole in someone's barn with their field artillery piece .

 

Da problem is that when one of those bad citizens has an F-15, or one of those ordinary citizens who has just hit a life crisis point has an F-15, the consequences can be very bad for lots of other folks, eh? Da fellow with da F-15 has had it with da commy Chinese takin' American jobs, so he flies his F-15 over and does the murder-suicide thing to take out da Chinese Premier's airplane. A fellow can do a lot of damage, includin' startin' a war with a nuclear power, that he couldn't do back in the day.

 

That's not as far-fetched as it sounds, eh? After all, George Washington and a bunch of armed militia with plain ol' muskets started the whole French & Indian War / Seven Years' War. I'm not sure we want to allow that anymore. Particularly since if Bill Gates can buy that F-15, then so can the drug cartel, and so can an Al Queda fellow.

 

I reckon that's the struggle we have, eh? I think we want to allow hobbyists to do their thing. A bunch of civil war re-enactors should be allowed to own their own cannon. If da Beavah wants to buy and fly a MiG, I should be able to do that for fun. In both cases, we should meet da training and proficiency standards for our equipment. At the same time, I'm not sure it's OK for da guy who blathers on about da War of Northern Aggression to be stockpiling shells with binary nerve agents for da future War Against Federal Tyranny. I'm not convinced that Beavah fellow should be allowed to have a nuclear device outfitted for his MiG.

 

Now, I'm a law-abiding citizen, and yah, I'd probably be completely safe owning a nuke. I can say that I would truly only use it in a final defense of the nation, and possibly not even then. At the same time, my owning a nuclear-armed fighter jet would substantially increase da chance that a criminal would manage to steal it from me, eh? Then da criminal would have the nuke. Maybe my kid would grab da keys when I wasn't lookin', feelin' all angsty and self-righteous as teenagers are wont to do.

 

The other thing is, if I'm bein' honest, havin' that nuke would be on my mind a lot. I would be tempted to use it, eh? When readin' about some 3rd world despot engaged in genocide, there'd be a part of me that would look at that nuke and say "Well, gee, that would look awfully good in Kim Jong Un's bedroom." If my son was visitin' Korea and was killed by that nut job decidin' to randomly shell a South Korean beach, then who knows? Lots of folks who seem to be fine, upstanding citizens hit a point, eh?

 

So to me it seems like any weaponry where da primary use is in common defense, should be in some way under da control of da public. An armed jet fighter can't rationally be used in personal defense. So its use should be limited to when da public authorizes its use for da common defense. That keeps me from independently nuking North Korea, because other folks get to have a say.

 

Da same might be said for a cannon, or even an AR-15, eh? Their primary use is as weapons for a common defense role, rather than a personal defense role. So perhaps their use should be limited to when some reliable group of people, rather than an individual, authorizes it. Yah, sure, we can throw in a hobbyist exception, where a reliable and trained group of da public can shoot blanks for re-enactments, or where reliable and trained group of firearms enthusiasts can shoot AR-15s at a private club or range.

 

Beavah

 

[Rick_in_CA]

Actually, you CAN buy a fighter jet or tank here in the US. They are just large and expensive. Buying one with working weapons is a lot harder (lots of permits, but in theory it can be done). Actually a friend of mine used to collect WW2 vehicles, he owned several tanks (and he had a friend that legally owned a WW2 Sherman with working guns). There are several fighter jets in private hands in the U.S.. Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame) owns a MIG-29 (just type "mig-29 Paul Allen" into Google).

 

The reason you don't see drug cartels fielding tanks and fighter planes, is that they are VERY conspicuous (especially if you try to use them), and simply not worth the expense (for them at least). Though I do remember reading an article about some drug cartel using an old B-17 bomber complete with original machine guns to transport cocaine within Columbia. Don't know if it was real or not.

 

I'm sure if someone steals Paul Allen's MIG and kamikazes the local post office with it, we will have a national hand-wringing and lots of "why on earth do people need fighter jets?" and "anyone that feels a need to have a MIG-29 is mentally unbalanced". Of course if someone does the same thing with a stolen Lear jet, that would be different. They don't look anywhere as scary as a MIG-29!