[Discussion] How to enact Gun Safety

The scope of this discussion is strictly options or suggestions on HOW to create policy and law and how to implement them in the US so as to reduce the number of guns in the hands of those who intend to use them for criminal purposes.

Whether or not those options should be explored is not under debate. The 2nd Amendment is not under debate nor under discussion. The assumption of the thread is that "gun control" law is necessary at this point and which policies and laws are good to pursue on the basis of putative results.

The registry has to be implemented better, I guess? So that's a point of common ground?

How about medical liability, if the gun is stolen, but what not reported stolen until it was already involved in a crime? We're talking about straw purchases here. Some criminal elements get their hands on guns like that and it would be nice to close that up.

LarryC wrote:

The registry has to be implemented better, I guess? So that's a point of common ground?

How about medical liability, if the gun is stolen, but what not reported stolen until it was already involved in a crime? We're talking about straw purchases here. Some criminal elements get their hands on guns like that and it would be nice to close that up.

The federal gun registry, or national gun registry, is being blocked on all levels of government right now. It’s part of the ATF issue. But yes, that is a common point.

Liability for the gun owner is also a common point, but it’s too ephemeral. There are too many holes around it, too much wiggle room, too many edge cases.

If the gun isn’t reported stolen, then further liability is absolutely warranted. The last time I checked though, all stolen gun reports are done on paper and are disallowed by law to be put into a computer.

GQ article from 2016

No computer searchable records allowed, no national gun registry, just kept at stores. And this ATF place collects all records from closed gun stores to try to help trace things down. It's a long read but worth it.

Hm. Breakthrough? Sounds like a registry of guns, accessible records, and medical liabilities for irresponsible owners is something that could be explored and gain bipartisan support. The NRA won't stand for it, but hopefully most gun owners will.

LarryC wrote:

Hm. Breakthrough? Sounds like a registry of guns, accessible records, and medical liabilities for irresponsible owners is something that could be explored and gain bipartisan support. The NRA won't stand for it, but hopefully most gun owners will.

Nope, they spent 8 years fearmongering that Obama was going to take all their guns. In their paranoid minds, registration is the first step to confiscation. Never happen.

Stele wrote:

GQ article from 2016

No computer searchable records allowed, no national gun registry, just kept at stores. And this ATF place collects all records from closed gun stores to try to help trace things down. It's a long read but worth it.

ATF stands for Alcohol Tobacco Firearms, the arm of the Federal government that is supposed to enforce laws around those three things at the federal level.

Common sense gun control will likely have to start with that being staffed properly, and being brought up to modern technology.

Stele wrote:
LarryC wrote:

Hm. Breakthrough? Sounds like a registry of guns, accessible records, and medical liabilities for irresponsible owners is something that could be explored and gain bipartisan support. The NRA won't stand for it, but hopefully most gun owners will.

Nope, they spent 8 years fearmongering that Obama was going to take all their guns. In their paranoid minds, registration is the first step to confiscation. Never happen.

Obama is out and Trump is in. Registration isn't going to end up with Trump getting guns. He's just going to get the ones from the thugs. You know what I mean, right?

Yes, it's a horrible and racist way to convince horrible racists, but it could work.

Does civilian gun ownership require liability insurance in the US?

Up here owning land does, and it's needed on one's car to drive legally. When I was a security guard they mentioned they'd have to have some very very expensive training and liability insurance if they wanted to arm us with batons, and it would be many magnitudes higher if they wanted us to carry guns.

Getting a SCOTUS which can overturn Heller is probably the first thing you need to do.

I think mandatory firearm insurance would be another good start. At least the victims of gun crimes might be able to have some kind of fidelity fund to cover the externalisation costs of arming a polite society.

A bullet tax and smaller (and limited) magazines also make sense but good luck with that; I mean, people talk about a sugar tax, but even though obesity/diabetes probably account for more deaths than guns, it's not going to happen any time soon.

But who are we kidding? In Australia, there was nowhere near the level of firearm proliferation and cultural saturation that there is in the US.

athros wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It bears mentioning that both Edwin and Paleocon are avid gun users and both support regulations about gun safety.

I’m in the same group, and I knew that Paleocon was a gun owner. I didn’t know that Edwin is. Paleocon’s involvement is the reason I felt ok with participating

I'm not an avid user anymore. I've stopped cold turkey about 10 months ago after being so utterly disgusted with how the election shook out and everything since. I went from being a championship winning competition shooter to thinking about selling or destroying everything.

It continues to be completely and utterly baffling to this and many, many other outsiders how staunch, archaic 2A interpretation continues to be a hill that the American populace as a whole is (quite literally) willing to die on. The last post on the first page of this thread is a brutal read but it's true, right? You can throw as many statistics about relative deaths/100k, %firearm deaths/firearm owners around as you want, you can talk about the disproportionate political influence of the NRA, you can assert the unassailable right to self-defence... You can do these things and many more but until you act decisively to demilitarise the civilian population it's all chaff in the wind.

I know these posts are unproductive and I'm pretty sure I've made them before but this particular madness is so sad and infuriating I can't help commenting. The comparative value of human life to unfettered possession of the very tip of the personal force spectrum is absolutely mystifying.

Coming from Aus, I feel somewhat familiar with gun culture but my students here are generally confused by these kinds of incidents when they see them reported. Gun control in Japan is far stricter than even that in Australia. On the whole, they have a good impression of the US and Americans (staunch allies after all) but they ask me if it's still a safe country to visit.

Edwin wrote:
athros wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It bears mentioning that both Edwin and Paleocon are avid gun users and both support regulations about gun safety.

I’m in the same group, and I knew that Paleocon was a gun owner. I didn’t know that Edwin is. Paleocon’s involvement is the reason I felt ok with participating

I'm not an avid user anymore. I've stopped cold turkey about 10 months ago after being so utterly disgusted with how the election shook out and everything since. I went from being a championship winning competition shooter to thinking about selling or destroying everything.

I am close myself. The baby step I took is not patronizing any business that contributes to the NRA. This pretty much means I haven't shot since this time last year.

We have very close friends living in Toronto who are seriously contemplating moving to the US. She is originally from here and they recently had a baby so would like to get back to family. Job opportunities would also be much better for them.

Trumps election made them delay the move for obvious reasons. Now what it comes down to is our gun culture. They aren't sure they want to raise there son in this society. We reassured them that while yes, there are obviously more shootings than in Canada, it is still a rare event and really nothing to worry about.

But the number of people being shot in our city, the publicity of people being shot by cops (I live near Minneapolis) and now this. I think they're staying in Canada.

If every black adult male in the U.S. bought & registered a semi-automatic rifle tomorrow, Congress would Pass gun control laws by Friday.

@ebenet’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/ebenet/status/91...

The Las Vegas Massacre Was A Ritual Sacrifice To The Second Amendment

On Monday, with victims of the previous night’s massacre still dying at Las Vegas-area hospitals, conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly had a blunt message to a nation in mourning after the latest high-profile mass shooting, this one the deadliest in modern U.S. history. This sort of death and suffering, he said, is a foregone conclusion.

“This is the price of freedom,” the former Fox News anchor wrote on his website. “The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons.”

cube wrote:
Jonman wrote:
cube wrote:

I'd just like to know how the the cars can figure out where to go without an internet connection to download maps.

Have you heard of computers? How about memory devices, like hard drives? Look them up. They're rather clever.

You do realize that route planning is done by Apple/Google/MS' cloud, not by your personal device, right? And the only way to contact those servers is... through the internet.

My old Garmin has no transmitter in it of any sort, I have to wonder how it is offloading calculations to the cloud without that.

farley3k wrote:

The Las Vegas Massacre Was A Ritual Sacrifice To The Second Amendment

On Monday, with victims of the previous night’s massacre still dying at Las Vegas-area hospitals, conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly had a blunt message to a nation in mourning after the latest high-profile mass shooting, this one the deadliest in modern U.S. history. This sort of death and suffering, he said, is a foregone conclusion.

“This is the price of freedom,” the former Fox News anchor wrote on his website. “The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons.”

This is really how I am coming to feel about it. It reminds of the stories of the Aztecs, or the Brittany Spears episode of South Park. America as a culture has a love affair with bloodshed. We revel in it, and when these incidents happen we offer up our 'thoughts and prayers' just as though the blood were making the sun rise.

I have friends that have espoused very similar sentiments. One former cop I know even went as far as to say "the United States is the Gold Standard for personal freedom and this is just what we have to accept as the cost".

Mixolyde wrote:

If every black adult male in the U.S. bought & registered a semi-automatic rifle tomorrow, Congress would Pass gun control laws by Friday.

@ebenet’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/ebenet/status/91...

There is absolutely no way that background checks, if enacted, wouldn't disproportionately affect black americans. I mean heaven forfend it'd actually focus on effective predictors of mass homicide like being a man with a history of domestic violence.

Paleocon wrote:

I have friends that have espoused very similar sentiments. One former cop I know even went as far as to say "the United States is the Gold Standard for personal freedom and this is just what we have to accept as the cost".

I hate to say it but I think this is true. The gun genie isn't going back in the bottle and I think as a society we have just come to accept that every now and then someone is going to shoot up a bunch of people. Similar to how 20 years ago you flew knowing that every now and then a plane was going to go down. The difference is they figured out a way to make the flying much safer. The gun problem, not so much.

Docjoe wrote:

I hate to say it but I think this is true. The gun genie isn't going back in the bottle and I think as a society we have just come to accept that every now and then someone is going to shoot up a bunch of people.

See, that's just silly. You can say that y'all refuse to put in the effort to re-bottle the genie, but to suggest that there's nothing to be done so oh well ridiculous.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

I hate to say it but I think this is true. The gun genie isn't going back in the bottle and I think as a society we have just come to accept that every now and then someone is going to shoot up a bunch of people.

See, that's just silly. You can say that y'all refuse to put in the effort to re-bottle the genie, but to suggest that there's nothing to be done so oh well ridiculous.

It is kind of ridiculous but I am not sure it is untrue in our current political climate.

That's why I say it was reasonable to say that y'all weren't going to stuff the genie back in, but silly to say that it can't be done.

It can be done, Australia did it, we (America) just don't have a desire as a culture to do so. Heck there is still a not insignificant portion of our population that would really like to roll back that whole emancipation thing and that was over 100 years ago, so I don't really find it surprising we can't muster up the willpower to properly address the whole gun thing.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

That's why I say it was reasonable to say that y'all weren't going to stuff the genie back in, but silly to say that it can't be done.

I'd add a caveat. It can't be done on the federal level during this Administration. The potent brew of incompetence and plain old evil make that the case.

Docjoe wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I have friends that have espoused very similar sentiments. One former cop I know even went as far as to say "the United States is the Gold Standard for personal freedom and this is just what we have to accept as the cost".

I hate to say it but I think this is true. The gun genie isn't going back in the bottle and I think as a society we have just come to accept that every now and then someone is going to shoot up a bunch of people. Similar to how 20 years ago you flew knowing that every now and then a plane was going to go down. The difference is they figured out a way to make the flying much safer. The gun problem, not so much.

IMAGE(http://www.nappertime.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/cabin-in-teh-woods-monsters.jpg)

Pretty sure the only one they need is a white dude with a machinegun.

Paleocon wrote:

I have friends that have espoused very similar sentiments. One former cop I know even went as far as to say "the United States is the Gold Standard for personal freedom and this is just what we have to accept as the cost".

So the Gold Standard for personal freedom is that anyone at any time could shot you and rob you of your very life? That doesn't sound very personal freedomy for the person who gets shot.

Docjoe wrote:

The gun genie isn't going back in the bottle and I think as a society we have just come to accept that every now and then someone is going to shoot up a bunch of people. Similar to how 20 years ago you flew knowing that every now and then a plane was going to go down. The difference is they figured out a way to make the flying much safer. The gun problem, not so much.

Flying is much safer than it was in the 60s and 70s because society actually did something about plane crashes.

Manufacturers invested in technologies that made planes safer and more reliable. Governments wrote laws and insisted on strict standards and oversight every step of the way--from aircraft design to ongoing maintenance. Governments also wrote laws to ensure that dangerous people didn't get on board planes.

It's the same reason why about the same number of people die in car accidents today when we drive 3.2 trillion miles annually as did in the early 1950s when we drove 500 million miles a year. Society didn't accept those deaths and collectively did something about it.

Our roads didn't just magically become safer. The government spent loads of money to study car and road safety. It made new laws and regulations. It repeatedly had to force car manufacturers to adopt safety equipment.

There's no reason we can't do the same for firearms.

And it all starts with spreading the idea that firearm ownership is not an inviolable right. It's something that our Founding Fathers f*cked up on, just like they did with allowing slavery and denying women the right to vote.

It's about shaping the narrative so we're talking about why gun owners are valuing firearms--things--over innocent lives. It's about never letting gun myths go unchallenged: that they are needed to fight against a tyrannical government, that they make you and your family safer, etc. It's about trying to get gun enthusiasts to understand their role in every gun death--and their responsibility.

And, if I'm being honest, it's also about exploiting the extremes of gun owners. It's about driving a wedge between the folks who might have purchased a single firearm for home protection and the folks who've amassed an arsenal along with enough ammunition to fight off an Army battalion. It's about pointing to the white supremacist state militias increasingly showing to political gatherings and protests armed to the teeth and asking "Is this how our Founding Father intended the 2nd Amendment to be used, as a tool of intimidation?"

And there's also going to be a huge demographic component as well. Gun owners are primarily conservative white dudes living in the suburbs and rural areas. They aren't going to be a majority in this country forever. And for every suburban white guy who looks back fondly at hunting with their grandfather there's going to be a POC who has a starkly different childhood memory about firearms.

OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I have friends that have espoused very similar sentiments. One former cop I know even went as far as to say "the United States is the Gold Standard for personal freedom and this is just what we have to accept as the cost".

So the Gold Standard for personal freedom is that anyone at any time could shot you and rob you of your very life? That doesn't sound very personal freedomy for the person who gets shot.

If you believe in American Exceptionalism, you have to believe this. Otherwise, you must allow for the possibility that the States is doing at least some things wrong, and then the core tenet of American Exceptionalism - that the US is the pinnacle of modern civilization, not perfect (heavens no! never such hubris as that) but the best that is currently possible - starts to crumble.

What did Flanders's parents say to the pediatrician?

"We haven't tried anything and nothing works!"