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Author Topic: Mass Shootings/Gun Reform
Stone_Wolf_
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Sam wants me out of his yard...good thing I have my own.

And it still has that new thread smell.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Here are a few thoughts...

A new federal agancy, the Militia Preparedness Oversight bureau.

They would issue federal concieled carry permits, valid in all 50 states & territories & protectorates. The cost would be covered by the applicant, but would be on a sliding scale of income. The battery of tests/classes would include,

● Firearm Safety

● Psychological evaluation

● Tactical training, including "shoot/don't shoot" simulations

● Advanced First Aid

● Background check

● Age restricted

● Citizen's arrest

Further, if caring a weapon, citizens would have to carry a tramma first aid kit & 1 million in insurance. Licensure would require revaluation every 3 years & require an "on demand" waiver for drug tests & psych evals.

Also, the MPO would deal with complaints and investigate license holders for improper/unsafe use & abuse.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Proof of safe storage needs to be a federal law yesterday.

It is the law in my state, thankfully.

When I was a 12 year old child my father did not own a safe and by all rights I should have shot myself or others on several occacions.

He also bought me the safe I currently use.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Oh, and MPO funding would be raised from gun*/ammo/assesories sales as a special tax.

[ June 25, 2016, 01:31 AM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]

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Rakeesh
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A few thoughts: it seems a bit of a euphamism to call it anything 'militia' related. Fact is, most firearms purchases in the United States aren't driven by fears of tyranny or a desire to keep government in check, or a concern with state and local fast-response readiness to external threats. Generally it's about crime and the investment we have as a society in believing America is a much more dangerous and violent place than it actually is.

A sliding scale that is paid for by applicants seems a bit of a contradiction. That program you described would be extremely expensive, especially since I assume much of it would need to be recurring to some extent.

I think you're seriously underestimating the difficulty involved in training people to be effective combatants in any sort of emergency situation involving gunfire. Even with elite soldiers who train all of their lives for controlled violence in unpredictable situations, a significant part of the success that they have involves enormous amounts of training and, in the case of a particular scenario, often a great deal of specific simulation and rehearsal for the event when it happens.

Put more simply that part of your suggestion seems a lot to me like asking a platoon of National Guard infantry to conduct a hostage rescue mission. I don't suggest that they'll try their goddamndest but I would not be surprised if it didn't go well. And I doubt your program would exceed the training of the old 'one weekend a month two weeks a year' standard either.

Effectively deputizing anyone who wants the right to carry a concealed weapon also seems problematic to me, particularly if they're armed. Regular police make mistakes on this aspect of law enforcement all the time, and they're trained and retrained. And probably would be better trained than a recurring concealed weapons carry law.

Many parts I like. The idea that someone should have to give a urine or breath test or void their license is a good one, to me. It should be akin to cars and planes. I'm concerned in this idea with who will be paying for the excess because this is an expensive set of proposals. Will it be borne only by those seeking these permits, or who else will get roped in to supporting this process?

I am also especially critical of the idea that a state or especially a local government will have no say as to whether its citizens and visitors may live and travel through their town carrying lethal force. I'm not fond of the idea of a person coming into, say, a small town who has said, "We've gotten together and thought about this, and we don't believe it's all that dangerous here and we're not worried about threats foreign and domestic. We think that on balance, your carrying a gun wherever and whenever you like makes us less safe, not more. So we're going to have to insist that you not carry a concealed weapon while we as a community have decided we shouldn't do that here." But under your program the man or woman who wishes to carry a concealed weapon in this town essentially gets to say, "Tough shit. But you can trust me to make things safer here. Not that I need you to trust me because again, tough shit, but still I'm as good as or better than a cop."

What about a private business that wants to restrict weapons period on its property? What about a college football game? A movie theater?

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Stone_Wolf_
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● All gun free zones would be honored just like current carry permits.
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Stone_Wolf_
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● Use of "militia" ties directory into the wording & intent (imho) of the Second Amendment

● MPO could keep lists of firearm registry, and could be in charge of registering old or passed down weapons. Registration information would include finger prints & ballistic fingerprints of the firearm.

This list would be used by LE to solve crimes, and would be protected by law & only used for computer comparison or by warrent.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Use of "militia" ties directory into the wording & intent (imho) of the Second Amendment.
Why concealed carry, then? It's not like anyone was concealing their musket.
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Rakeesh
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Yeah, 'concealed' is very much not in the spirit of 18th century colonial militias.
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Stone_Wolf_
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Current concieled carry permits are issued (in CA) by the police dpt if in a city with one, or by the county sheriff if not.

The permit is state wide, but also good in many other states.

quote:
While 37 states have reciprocity agreements with at least one other state and several states honor all out-of-state concealed carry permits, some states have special requirements like training courses or safety exams, and therefore do not honor permits from states that do not have such requirements for issue.
quote:
...the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that there were about 8 million active permits in the United States as of December 31, 2011.
And then there's states like this:

quote:
Among U.S. states, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas[disputed], Idaho (effective July 1, 2016), Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Puerto Rico[disputed], Vermont, West Virginia[46] and Wyoming are fully unrestricted, and allow those who are not prohibited from owning a firearm to carry a concealed firearm in any place not deemed off-limits by law without a permit.
And these states:
quote:
A shall-issue jurisdiction is one that requires a license to carry a concealed handgun, but where the granting of such licenses is subject only to meeting determinate criteria laid out in the law; the granting authority has no discretion in the awarding of the licenses, and there is no requirement of the applicant to demonstrate "good cause".
Which are...
quote:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina,[35] North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon,[36] Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (for permits issued by local authorities), South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,[37] Texas,[38][39] Utah,[40] Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.[17] The territory of Guam is also Shall-Issue with the passage of Bill 296.

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Stone_Wolf_
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
Use of "militia" ties directory into the wording & intent (imho) of the Second Amendment.
Why concealed carry, then? It's not like anyone was concealing their musket.
Um...interesting question...open carry is so wild wild west...concieled carry seems safer, as if the permit holder allows their weapon to be seen w/o cause, it breaks the law.

Back in the day, hiking back from town with a 6 foot musket offhandedly toted w you was not a rare sight.

Society changes...the dangers are no longer bears & hostile natives.

And I seriously doubt you are advocating for folk to be able to walk about with an AR strapped to their chest

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Rakeesh
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That's a false dichotomy. The choices are not 'open carry on all weapons' and 'concealed carry on handguns'. And in any event if we're going to discuss 'back in the day', then I think we would have to discuss what weapons were actually like back then. To kill dozens of people in a crowded area quickly what used to be needed was a cannon loaded with grapeshot, not a single person with two firearms.
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Stone_Wolf_
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The purpose of the sliding scale is to prevent it from exclusively of the rich.
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Rakeesh
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I understand that, but in order for that to be viable you'll have to significantly overcharge wealthy applicants, because the group of programs you've described would be very expensive. I mean for example around here a first time driver's license and test would run something like $35. That's for one written test on a computer, a picture taken, a card printed, and a quick spin around the area with an employee evaluating. All of that for $35 at the most basic license test.

What you've described is much, much more expensive than that and would be recurring more often as well. Hell, just a background check is more expensive.

So how will your idea deal with this? The sliding scale will drastically overcharge the wealthier applicants for what is, according to federal interpretation of the 2nd Amendmant, a constitutional right. That becomes pretty problematic, legally speaking.

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Risuena
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I think this is a very interesting article on the evolution of gun culture and the NRA.

First, it's changed a lot in the last 40 years:

quote:
The story of how millions of Americans discovered the urge to carry weapons—to join, in effect, a self-appointed, well-armed, lightly trained militia—begins not in the Old West but in the nineteen-seventies. For most of American history, gun owners generally frowned on the idea. In 1934, the president of the National Rifle Association, Karl Frederick, testified to Congress, “I do not believe in the promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” In 1967, after a public protest by armed Black Panthers in Sacramento, Governor Ronald Reagan told reporters that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
Carrying a gun makes you more dangerous because you're more likely to believe others are carrying:

quote:
Ung’s misreading may have been the most catastrophic. When Kelly hiked up the drooping belt of his pants, Ung suspected that he, too, might have a gun. That mistake is not uncommon: a person holding a gun is more likely to misperceive an object in another person’s hand to be a gun, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Unarmed citizens have stopped more active shooters than armed citizens and concealed carry appears to have increased violent crime:
quote:
In the early years of concealed carry, there was a debate about whether it reduced violence or increased it. A decade ago, when mass shootings were emerging as a frequent phenomenon, the conservative economist John Lott asserted that carry guns could halt those killings—a precursor to the N.R.A.’s current maxim that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” It’s a mantra among concealed carriers, but evidence is sparse. A 2014 study by the F.B.I. found that, in a hundred and sixty “active shooter” incidents from 2000 to 2013, armed citizens who were not security guards stopped the “bad guy” on one occasion (when a patron shot an attacker at the Players Bar and Grill, in Winnemucca, Nevada, in 2008). Unarmed citizens, by contrast, stopped active shooters on twenty-one occasions. In recent years, scholars have found that concealed carry may be altering society in measurable, and unwelcome, ways: in 2014, a study led by the Stanford law professor John J. Donohue III examined the effect of concealed-carry laws on crime, using data from 1979 to 2010. He found that the laws led to “substantially higher rates” of aggravated assault, rape, robbery, and murder.

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Rakeesh
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Yeah, I listened to a Fresh Air interview with that writer this week. Interesting stuff. I knew how much the NRA had changed in the last three generations-for example, it sounds like an institution I could have respected before the 1970s-but the story of Smith and Wesson and the deliberate fear-mongering, at least the extent of it, was new to me.

I worry that it's basically a decisive victory for that side of things at this point. I mean, I don't think I've read and certainly haven't encountered times when someone was talked out of 'don't take your cues on how dangerous the world is from the evening news for god's sake'.

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Samprimary
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Up until relatively recently in U.S. history, even the NRA was against concealed carry. Historically, it was considered only appropriate to have all firearms on a person visible.

That was indeed mentioned by Osnos in the fresh air interview you are speaking about:

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/23/483211713/handguns-in-america-and-the-rise-of-the-concealed-carry-lifestyle

which i recommend everyone listen to fyi. he discusses pretty plainly how guns, as an industry, are marketed through pure fear and culture a paranoid mindset among gun advocates which dramatically increases violence and has many socially negative implications.

John Lott has had a lot of sway over the years but ... his science has been shown to be almost entirely invalid, and his conclusions failed to materialize. instead, we got the opposite results from his postulation (kind of similar to Lafferism, in an eerie way)

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Lyrhawn
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
Use of "militia" ties directory into the wording & intent (imho) of the Second Amendment.
Why concealed carry, then? It's not like anyone was concealing their musket.
Um...interesting question...open carry is so wild wild west...concieled carry seems safer, as if the permit holder allows their weapon to be seen w/o cause, it breaks the law.

Back in the day, hiking back from town with a 6 foot musket offhandedly toted w you was not a rare sight.

Society changes...the dangers are no longer bears & hostile natives.

And I seriously doubt you are advocating for folk to be able to walk about with an AR strapped to their chest

I question this. My guess would be that in fact it probably was somewhat odd for a person to go to town armed and return to their home. For what purpose? People didn't care muskets around all the time for personal protection. On the frontier you might see something like that if the area was known for outlaws or raids, in which case there was likely to be a military presence nearby. Otherwise, unless you were mustering for military service, or you were specifically out hunting, it's unlikely you'd have your gun with you.

And if it was the wild west, you probably wouldn't have your gun with you in town as many western towns had laws prohibiting carrying a weapon in town. It had to be checked with the Sheriff before entering and picked up upon leaving.

I also question the relevance of "bears and hostile" natives as the active variable we should be looking at. Most constitutional scholars would argue, I believe, that the Second Amendment wasn't drafted for the purpose of personal defense against wild animals. Or even Native Americans. So the change in the inherent dangers of walking from your house to the grocery store wouldn't affect that.

What would affect it would be a change in the average weapon of war, which a person would need access to in order to discharge their duty in the local militia. By that measure, people should be allowed to have fully automatic weapons. We generally believe that we SHOULDN'T have fully automatic weapons or other weapons of war. It's somewhat ironic that we've all come to agreement that regular people shouldn't have weapons a soldier would have when the Second Amendment was designed to allow everyone to keep access to weapons necessary to make them a soldier.

This is why I laugh whenever I hear people say that they want to be able to overthrow the government. Okay. Good luck with that. Not that an insurgency can't do a great deal of damage, but a population armed with semi-automatics along, and probably IEDs, would find themselves overwhelming underdogs against the US military (especially when we all speak the same language and have the same cultural norms).

Although Scalia did once say he it was undecided whether or not the Second Amendment allowed a person to own a Stinger Missile, so many not everyone agreed.

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Rakeesh
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I'm not going to dip my toe in the water of Justice Scalia's integrity, but I will say that his thinking could get pretty...limber when it came to some ideological questions.

Stone_Wolf, there are a number of difficulties with your ideas, and I think some of them are good, that mean it simply won't happen. But there's one big obstacle to any sort of meaningful gun control reform anywhere in the United States that isn't only the most powerful oppponent to such reform in specific cases, but the most universal.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-happened-when-a-major-gun-company-crossed-the-nra/ it's a short article with an attached video about six minutes long, and PBS can be trusted with factual reporting such as this. Basically, Smith & Wesson after facing lawsuits over gun violence cut a deal with the Clinton Administration in 2000. The main features were background checks, safety locks, and magazine capacities for their weapons and weapon sales.

For this transgression, the NRA began a campaign basically of lies and scare-mongering and political pressure that caused Smith and Wesson to lose about 90% of its value and be sold. All of the things you listed in your ideal program were part of this deal the NRA mobilized to destroy and ensure no other gun manufacturer would ever dare to do such a thing again.

If you want any sort of meaningful reform, if you want even one of your plan's components to be even partially instituted, much less all of of them entirely, you would first have to pull the teeth of the NRA or profoundly change its leadership. Change it *back* I should say to what it once was.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Risuena:
I've -never- been a big proponent if the NRA...I was born in '80, so I've always thought (as far as I remember anyway)...they take -any- restriction, even logical, nesseccery ones as a direct affront to the second.

quote:
"The story of how millions of Americans discovered the urge to carry weapons—to join, in effect, a self-appointed, well-armed, lightly trained militia—begins not in the Old West but in the nineteen-seventies."
That millions of Americans in all 50 want & do carry is enough that there should be federal oversight...that the heart of the 2nd is citizens being a last resort to defend themselves...to me at least. That 10 states allow any non fellon to carry is enough to want some oversight. That 8 million permits have been issued...that 39 states have a "shall issue" polacy...

quote:
Carrying a gun makes you more dangerous because you're more likely to believe others are carrying:
I'd like to see numbers on that. My father told me the exact opposite was true, that having a concealed weapon makes one less likely to look for trouble, as you kno you carry added responsibility. My time carrying was exposed, for a living as private security, at which time I assure you that I undeed felt added pressure bc of the extra weight on my hip.

quote:
Unarmed citizens have stopped more active shooters than armed citizensand...
This seems largely irrelevant? If you asked those brave people as they rushed the crazed gunmen if they would like to stop time and get a gun and some training, I'd wager not a one would turn you down.

quote:
...and concealed carry appears to have increased violent crime:
Without mandatory training & psych evals what do you expect?
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Stone_Wolf_
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Ugh... phone ate my post to Lyr...
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Rakeesh
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Stone_Wolf,

quote:
I've -never- been a big proponent if the NRA...I was born in '80, so I've always thought (as far as I remember anyway)...they take -any- restriction, even logical, nesseccery ones as a direct affront to the second.
That's all well and good, but if you want even one of your ideas to even be possible, mitigating the strongest so-called defender of the Second Amendmant is the common thread for all of them. Put another way: compromise with gun control advocates is not the thing necessary to achieve your goals. Dealing with the lunatic fringe run amok of your own side of this particular aisle is the one that's needed.

quote:
That millions of Americans in all 50 want & do carry is enough that there should be federal oversight...that the heart of the 2nd is citizens being a last resort to defend themselves...to me at least. That 10 states allow any non fellon to carry is enough to want some oversight. That 8 million permits have been issued...that 39 states have a "shall issue" polacy.
Alright, but not long ago you said that states and localities should be able to determine much of this. It seems like a contradiction.

quote:

I'd like to see numbers on that. My father told me the exact opposite was true, that having a concealed weapon makes one less likely to look for trouble, as you kno you carry added responsibility. My time carrying was exposed, for a living as private security, at which time I assure you that I undeed felt added pressure bc of the extra weight on my hip.

That may well be true for your own anecdotal experience and that of your father. Seems a bit strange to insist on numbers-that the gun rights side is largely responsible for stopping research into-for a claim on the one hand and rebut it with entirely personal experience on the other. At the heart of that story linked to, btw, was how an ordinary scuffle escalated to a shooting because of the gun and how the carrier interpreted a totally benign gesture as a sign of a gun as well. So...anecdotal experience offset, then?

quote:
This seems largely irrelevant? If you asked those brave people as they rushed the crazed gunmen if they would like to stop time and get a gun and some training, I'd wager not a one would turn you down.
I think if you also asked them, "Would you rather be trained and equipped for a gunfight with this homicidal, suicidal maniac-or would you rather he not have gotten a gun in the first place?" the answer might also be illuminating as well.

quote:
Without mandatory training & psych evals what do you expect?
There's some circular thinking here. In this way of thinking, people are made less safe because people who shouldn't be trusted with guns get them, leading to people wishing to defend themselves with a gun. But...why is the solution 'maybe we should try to seriously limit the lethal force citizens can carry around others?' simply brushed aside. 'Better regulated guns' and 'fewer if any guns or handguns' both address the problem. That's the solution that other nations on earth most like us have tried, and successfully too.

If the reason you need guns is because there are too many guns and you're not safe, why is the proper course of action 'ok a huge and expensive program to ensure the most possible 'safe' guns are other there' instead of 'hey maybe this dangerous weapon shouldn't have as much of a place in our society?'

The defense against 'natives'* doesn't wash anymore. For nearly all Americans the defense against animals doesn't wash, and for those it does exceptions can be made. Defense against the government has the problem of being a fantasy. And defense against crime is centered around, as the NRA says, 'a bad guy with a gun' in their Saturday morning cartoon reasoning.

*And just as an aside that's a perverse reflection on some of the older roots of gun control rights-'hey we need to have guns so that when the people we're murdering and throwing off of their land get angry at us, we can kill them more easily'.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Part of this battle is going to picking a middle ground that, while both sides find distasteful, both sides find it ultimately plauseable.

Red side says...well, I'm not crazy, so I could still carry...

Blue side says...at least they get training & carry a med pack...and no nut jobs will get one.

I would image that part of federal registration would also be mandatory safety training & required proof of safe storage.

So perhaps to override special intrest, it would have to a direct vote or some such legal maneuver.

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Rakeesh
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I think that is a bit of an expression of one of the key difficulties. Political realities in this country are such that even 'compromises' involve major sacrifice by gun control advocates, and even basic common sense reforms are regarded as major concessions by gun rights people.

quote:

Red side says...well, I'm not crazy, so I could still carry...

Blue side says...at least they get training & carry a med pack...and no nut jobs will get one.

Case in point. 'Not crazy' should be a *given*. 'Some training' should as well, as is the case for every other powerful tool or license in our country-you must be sane and have some training to acquire them. Cars, planes, certain power tools, medical license, medicines, so on and so forth. Every single thing on your list is only a 'middle ground' because your side of the issue has so powerful and thoroughly perverted the discussion.
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Stone_Wolf_
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One wonders how to get a big law past a well funded, and absolute mindset private interest?

Would the more liberal minded voters accept that guns are just not going away...they are a part of the American fabric, and it would cause a possible second civil war...

The idea of overthrowing government was before modern warfare...there simply is no way citizens with small arms could defeat the US armed forces. Of course any plausible overthrowing of the government would HAVE to involve a coup or some other scenario were significant quantities of the military refuse orders.

Gun culture is big on rara freedom...and cops & military are often in the gun culture...and if ordered to round up US citizen's lawfully owned guns...let's just sat...it is NOT going to happen. Not this century anyway.

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Risuena
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Risuena:

quote:
Carrying a gun makes you more dangerous because you're more likely to believe others are carrying:
I'd like to see numbers on that. My father told me the exact opposite was true, that having a concealed weapon makes one less likely to look for trouble, as you kno you carry added responsibility. My time carrying was exposed, for a living as private security, at which time I assure you that I undeed felt added pressure bc of the extra weight on my hip.

The quote from the article I linked cited a study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology. I don't have access to that journal or study, but I will say that I am more likely to believe a study than I am to believe someone else's anecdotal evidence. Besides, it also makes sense to me. I don't carry a gun (by the way, while I am defintiely pro gun control, I am not anti gun - especially since I live in a house with many, many, many guns). You speak of a sense of responsibility or added pressure you feel while carrying a gun - in other words, you are very aware of that gun and that you are carrying. As someone who never carries a gun, I literally never think about guns while I'm out and about. It doesn't occur to me that others might be carrying. It makes sense to me that if I did carry, that I would at least occasionally think about that weight on my hip and wonder if other people were carrying.

quote:

quote:
Unarmed citizens have stopped more active shooters than armed citizensand...
This seems largely irrelevant? If you asked those brave people as they rushed the crazed gunmen if they would like to stop time and get a gun and some training, I'd wager not a one would turn you down.
How is this irrelevant? It shows that you don't need a gun to stop someone with a gun. So all of these arguments that various people put forward that "Virignia Tech could have been stopped if someone had a gun" "San Bernardino could have been stopped!" or "Pulse could have been stopped with a gun!" are questionable.

quote:
quote:
...and concealed carry appears to have increased violent crime:
Without mandatory training & psych evals what do you expect?
While I'm sure that's part of it, as Rakeesh pointed out, the article I quoted centered around an incident where a man with concealed carry got into an argument with others and shot one of the others.

Also, don't forget that gun laws in many states don't require someone with a restraining order to give up their firearms (though I believe you are not able to acquire a gun if you have a current restraining order), and women are at a very high risk of being murdered by a husband, boyfriend or ex.

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Rakeesh
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Stone_Wolf,

quote:
One wonders how to get a big law past a well funded, and absolute mindset private interest?

Would the more liberal minded voters accept that guns are just not going away...they are a part of the American fabric, and it would cause a possible second civil war...

Well if more gun owners, especially those in and influential in the NRA, when terms like 'civil war' and 'they're going to take our guns' are bandied about said, "Wait. You're being ridiculous. There isn't a single proposal on the table, nor anything like it, by anyone who isn't a fringe case, about taking away all of our guns. Meanwhile *we* are the ones who beat down any idea of meaningful reform, even the ones most of us agree are reasonable." That would be a start.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to hear this sort of talk. It's not about you, Stone_Wolf, I've felt this way for a long time, and plenty of other people have said it. 'Guns aren't going away because of you liberals even *talk* about it civil war etc etc.' It's basically a threat. Meanwhile, although gun control advocates and gun manufacturers are threatened and actually acted upon if they even consider reform, gun rights groups such as the NRA treat *any* sort of reform as a total threat to basically everything good and decent in America.

It's a shameful double standard, frankly, and I'm not the only gun control supporter who is well past sick of it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/21/the-average-gun-owner-now-owns-8-guns-double-what-it-used-to-be/ It's difficult to say-largely because gun rights groups make it extremely difficult to say-how many Americans actually own guns. But at present, the best data I've seen says it's about 1/3 Americans own guns, and has been declining to that rate since the 1970s. So I think you're wrong that it's 'part of the American fabric'. If we're going to say that is true, then it's twice as true to say that *not* owning a gun is part of the American fabric, right?

Think about that. It's incredibly easy to get a gun, yet 2/3 Americans don't. Doesn't that indicate that the fascination with and need for firearms is rather seriously overstated by gun rights advocates?

quote:

Gun culture is big on rara freedom...and cops & military are often in the gun culture...and if ordered to round up US citizen's lawfully owned guns...let's just sat...it is NOT going to happen. Not this century anyway.

If there are only two things you take from this conversation, I hope that they're 1) the main impediment to any of your ideas comes from your own side and 2) the 'come and round up guns' idea is a paranoid, fear-mongering fantasy put out by the very people making sure your view of the world is skewed to gun-confiscating police state in the making.

Now of course there are tons of problems with the gun control advocates, too. One of the big ones being that since like most Americans, gun control advocates often don't own and aren't interested in owning guns, they tend to be misinformed about them. 'Assault weapons' terminology being a big indicator. And sure, that needs to be fixed. But they're the leaky faucet in the guest bathroom, meanwhile the NRA has set the living do on fire.

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Stone_Wolf_
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quote:
It makes sense to me that if I did carry, that I would at least occasionally think about that weight on my hip and wonder if other people were carrying.
Personally...I could care less who is carrying, bc if they are doing it responsibly then I shouldn't even kno.

It's when someone starts waving a gun around that I care...to get on my phone to 911 & get the eff outa there...but when they start shooting folk that I would be very interested in being able to return fire.

Most folk I‘ve talked to carry a gun like full insurance on their car...hoping to never use it.

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Stone_Wolf_
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The flip to that coin is...the very few times in one's life that they NEED a gun, almost nothing else would do.
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Risuena
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Isn't the whole point of carrying a gun that you don't think other people will act responsible towards you or your loved one's lives? I.E., most people carry for self defense. And if that's why you're carrying, than you would be irresponsible to not think about the possibility that others are carrying.

[ June 27, 2016, 12:57 AM: Message edited by: Risuena ]

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Stone_Wolf_
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It matters not at all who is carrying...if they keep it in their pants.
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Rakeesh
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:
It makes sense to me that if I did carry, that I would at least occasionally think about that weight on my hip and wonder if other people were carrying.
Personally...I could care less who is carrying, bc if they are doing it responsibly then I shouldn't even kno.

It's when someone starts waving a gun around that I care...to get on my phone to 911 & get the eff outa there...but when they start shooting folk that I would be very interested in being able to return fire.

Most folk I‘ve talked to carry a gun like full insurance on their car...hoping to never use it.

You should really listen to that Fresh Air interview or read risuena's link. It addresses specifically this notion of 'hope to never use it'. Groups such as the NRA, with their massive fear-mongering campaign, send very mixed messages about this-that they hope never to use it but must be ready at all times in all places to use. Do you see the contradiction there?

Another thing you seem to be overlooking is the balance of risks involved. Yes, if with a wave of the hand all of your reforms were instituted-that will never happen in the foreseeable future, the gun rights side of the discussion has ensured that with overkill-it's quite possible, though far from proven, that such a licensed concealed carrier could prove useful in a mass shooting or, the gun violence that leads to far more deaths, an 'ordinary' gun crime involving a pair or a few people.

That's great, if it would work that way, I really think it would be. But against the very unlikely chance of being involved in a crime and the extremely, super unlikely chance of being involved in a mass shooting, you have to compare the years or decades or lifetime of gun ownership and attempt to assess those risks also.

In between these expensive and time-consuming recurring psychological tests, how much of a chance is there that the carrier will develop a mental illness associated with threat to themselves or others? How many times will they become intoxicated on one substance or another while they have access to or even carry their firearm? How many angry altercations will they be involved in? How many times will they face a betrayal by a loved one, whether family member or romantic partner?

So on and so forth. Many of those risks it is difficult or impossible to effectively evaluate, but you continually speak of the risks associated with the question of gun control exclusively in terms of 'what happens if bad stuff happens and a person doesn't have a gun and needs one?' You haven't once considered the other side of that question-what happens if bad stuff happens and someone has a gun that shouldn't? Psychological evaluations aren't gypsy fortunetellers, after all.

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It matters not at all who is carrying...if they keep it in their pants.

If they keep in in their pants, why do they need it?
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Stone_Wolf_
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Did I miss a link?

Will check...

I see zero contradiction in the constant need for a fire extinguisher or car insurance and never wanting to be in a fire or car accident.

I've known not a few, but many people who claim to have carried for multiple decades and never pulled their gun. Or only pulled appropriately.

As to wrong place wrong time...we humans are RIDICULESLY easy to kill...and are surrounded by stuff that can kill us...I'll switch to my laptop to elaborate

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Stone_Wolf_
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It matters not at all who is carrying...if they keep it in their pants.

If they keep in in their pants, why do they need it?
How often do you use your spare tire?
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Stone_Wolf_
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According to this info http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa-cause-of-death-by-age-and-gender

Homicide is 35th* leading cause of death in the US, with about 16k deaths so far in 2016...Heart disease is number one at a little under 400k.

Just this year,

The flu is over 3 times likelier to kill you than guns.

The high blood pressure is over 4.5 times likelier to kill you than guns.

A car accident is about 6 times likelier to kill you than guns.

Diabetes is about five times likelier to kill you than guns.

You are twice as likely to fall down and die than be shot to death.

Oh wait...not shot to death...killed by another human, regardless of tool used.

[ June 27, 2016, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]

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Stone_Wolf_
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It is SO difficult to find non biased info on guns...I guess I could just pull my stats from both liberal and conservative rags and then add them up and take the average.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
How often do you use your spare tire?
You keep your spare tire in your pants in case you need to kill someone?
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FlyingCow
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It is SO difficult to find non biased info on guns...I guess I could just pull my stats from both liberal and conservative rags and then add them up and take the average.

Well, the CDC isn't even allowed to study it, so data is sometimes hard to come by.
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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It matters not at all who is carrying...if they keep it in their pants.

If they keep in in their pants, why do they need it?
How often do you use your spare tire?
So it's out that they always keep it in their pants or not? Once they take it out, it matters who they are. You can't have it both ways.
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Risuena
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I would guess that the homicide numbers don't take into account suicides or accidental deaths, both of which guns contribute to as well.

And as FlyingCow points out, research on gun violence has been severely restricted in this country.

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Rakeesh
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quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It is SO difficult to find non biased info on guns...I guess I could just pull my stats from both liberal and conservative rags and then add them up and take the average.

Others have made this point, but I'll sum up: you're right, it is extremely difficult, and that is because one side of the argument has expended enormous political and financial capital to make it so. It is, incidentally, the same side of the argument that profits by more members and more guns being made, and tells you contradictions such as 'hope you'll never have to use it' but also 'you're safest if you're ready at any given time and place to use your gun'.

In fact there isn't a single issue you've raised or idea you've put forward that isn't made more contentious or less workable by the gun rights side of the issue as a whole. Right now, they have won, and frankly you're living on their world and kept from seeing for yourself if the grass really is greener on the other side by people that have a vested political and financial interest in keeping you in line.

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Stone_Wolf_
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I don't think so Risu, both suicide & "other injury" are on the list...25th & 26th respectively...all homicide 35th.
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Stone_Wolf_
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quote:
Originally posted by FlyingCow:
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It is SO difficult to find non biased info on guns...I guess I could just pull my stats from both liberal and conservative rags and then add them up and take the average.

Well, the CDC isn't even allowed to study it, so data is sometimes hard to come by.
Wait, wait, don't tell me, the gods damned NRA...you kno what we need...a REASONABLE pro gun loby, someone to fight for the middle.
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Stone_Wolf_
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
It matters not at all who is carrying...if they keep it in their pants.

If they keep in in their pants, why do they need it?
How often do you use your spare tire?
So it's out that they always keep it in their pants or not? Once they take it out, it matters who they are. You can't have it both ways.
This is a strange dycotomy...a gun in and of itself is inanimate...if someone carries for their whole life and never needs their gun, then
GREAT! If they carry and only use their gun appropriately, then GREAT! Those who pull their gun inappropriately are committing a crime.

I just don't understand your point.

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Rakeesh
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I think part of the point may be this: a spare tire is basically a tool that only has positive uses. Aside from the very, very mild drain on your fuel consumption, once you have a spare tire it is all upside. If you want to get extremely detailed, well, the price of one is a financial loss, there is a very mild drain on fuel economy, and there is a small loss of cargo capacity for a car.

Even with all of these 'downsides' taken together, the total 'con' column is extremely mild. It's not unreasonable to therefore say that even if they're never used, there are no downsides to having a spare tire. And if it *is* needed and then used, it will always be a benefit, or even a huge benefit.

Also ask yourself how often a given person is likely to need a spare tire in their lives. Just in your own experience, how many people have had the need for deadly force on their person versus how many people have had a flat tire, or needed to drive somewhere while a damaged tire is repaired? (I'll be fair, this is a trick question, since the answer is no contest.)

Contrast these things with the pros and cons of having a gun. A spare tire is simply a very bad comparison. While a handgun can be used in many good ways, it remains a weapon, not simply a tool. A spare tire is not a weapon unless you're hunting armadillo. Even determining when a gun is needed is difficult, whereas the same is not true for a spare tire. Once they decision to use a gun is made, the ways its use could go wrong are numerous. Aside from an incorrect installation, the same isn't true of a flat tire-and that process is much easier and more straightforward.

Throw in a dash of 'what happens when it's not in use'? And the ways in which a spare tire shouldn't be compared to a gun continue to mount. Zero chance you will get drunk and wield your spare tire negligently. Your spare tire will never be stolen and used as a weapon. Your kids have no chance of screwing around in the trunk of your car and firing your spare tire, ever. If your mental health takes a turn, your spare tire can't be used to shoot you in the head. You can't ever be in a crowded place and accidentally use your spare tire on the wrong people, killing them. On and on.

A spare tire isn't a gun.

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Stone_Wolf_
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Top 20 methods of suicide ranked by lethality.
http://lostallhope.com/suicide-methods/statistics-most-lethal-methods
Rank
Method Name
Lethality (%)

1 Shotgun to head. 99.0%
2 Cyanide. 97.0%
3 Gunshot of head 97.0%
4 Shotgun to chest 96.4%
5 Explosives 96.4%
6 Hit by train. 96.2%
7 Jump from height 93.4%

8 Gunshot of chest 89.5%
9 Hanging 89.5%
10 Auto crash 78.5%
11 Household toxins 77.5%

12 Set fire to self 76.5%
13 Structure fire 73.0%
14 Carbon Monoxide 71.0%
15 Hit by truck/auto 70.0%
16 Electrocution 65.5%
17 Gunshot of abdomen 65.0%
18 Drowning ocean/lake 63.0%
19 Stab of chest 58.5%
20 Cut throat 51.5%

As you can see, using a bridge, rope, train, car or poison are all VERY effective at suicide.

And with guns...where you shoot yourself is a bigger difference survivabilitywise than if you have a gun or not.

[ June 28, 2016, 12:29 AM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]

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Stone_Wolf_
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Yes a spare tire isn't a gun...but I wasn't make a generalized comparison, instead answering people who are saying that there is an inherent contradiction to carrying & never wanting to use.

Before that I was answering, if you carry, wouldn't you care who else was carrying...

Yes guns are more inherently dangerous than spare tires, a more apt comparison is not caring how your neighbor parks their car in their own driveway, but caring how they drive on the open road.

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Rakeesh
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The point of that being? In that list, firearms take up 1/4 of the methods used. That's twice the rate of anything else on the list, and nearly everyone else on that list is a tool for other purposes that in this case is repurposed to kill a human being. Guns don't require repurposing, as killing living things is their purpose. Cars, trains, electricity, household toxins, knives, and spare tires are all things designed for another purpose. Household knives, anyway.

None of that is reason to say 'ban guns', but you continue to come back to these strange examples and offer them as though they prove your point. Even with a list of things where they are a plurality of methods and the most lethal method as well.

I get that you still believe that the method doesn't matter, but the arguments you continue to bring up for that idea are just strange and ineffective. Such as referencing a case where 5 attackers using knives managed to kill fewer people than one man with two firearms. Can I ask, what sort of evidence or argument might make you change your mind about this question? Without trying to be snarky, having bad arguments rebutted doesn't seem to have made a dent.

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kmbboots
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https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/
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