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.
I have been pushing hard on my proposal to treat gun ownership like we do vehicle operation.
1) Universal registration
2) Annual inspection
3) Random inspection
4) Mandatory licensing
5) Mandatory liability insurance
Doing the above would absolutely annihilate the whole straw purchase exploit as anyone who wants to purchase a dozen guns for their felon friends would need to maintain the recurring costs of the liability insurance for each one of them. It would also make people a lot more conscientious about safe storage and responsible use when there is real and predictable cost.
As it is now, we pretty much treat every asshat that does something stupid with a gun like he is an uninsured motorist with multiple DUI's.
I saw the alleged FB screen captures when I image searched google for his Facebook account. I specifically questioned their accuracy in my post.
I asked you where you got your information from yesterday because I imaged searched for "Kelley atheist," "Kelley hates Christians," and other variants and the only thing that repeated came up was this image of him "liking" various atheist groups.
So I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how you could see that Facebook screen grab and then write "[Kelley's] history of hatred towards Christians" without there being an intermediary source of information that spun Kelley as being a baby-eating atheist.
Jayhawker's already addressed Kelley's antifa connections extensively: they didn't exist anywhere but in the fevered imaginations of various right wing media personalities and actual fake news sites.
Nomad wrote:I saw the alleged FB screen captures when I image searched google for his Facebook account. I specifically questioned their accuracy in my post.
I asked you where you got your information from yesterday because I imaged searched for "Kelley atheist," "Kelley hates Christians," and other variants and the only thing that repeated came up was this image of him "liking" various atheist groups.
So I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how you could see that Facebook screen grab and then write "[Kelley's] history of hatred towards Christians" without there being an intermediary source of information that spun Kelley as being a baby-eating atheist.
Jayhawker's already addressed Kelley's antifa connections extensively: they didn't exist anywhere but in the fevered imaginations of various right wing media personalities and actual fake news sites.
I want to honor the mods request, but is it ok if I respond to this accusatory tripe?
Here is a CNN article from today.
Here are some excerpts:
- The US Air Force acknowledged it did not relay Kelley's court martial conviction for domestic assault to civilian law enforcement that could have prevented him from purchasing the firearms used in the shooting. The Air Force and Department of Defense said they are investigating how records of his domestic violence conviction were handled.
- Kelley, 26, had three gunshot wounds. He was shot in the leg and torso by an armed citizen, and had a self-inflicted shot to the head, authorities said. It wasn't clear which gunshot Kelley died from, but there's evidence at the scene "that indicates the subject may have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound," Martin said. He was found dead in his vehicle.
- Investigators have reviewed video footage from inside the church, Martin said.
- Kelley was denied a license to carry a gun, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said. But he passed a background check required for the purchase he made in April 2016 of the Ruger AR-556 rifle he allegedly used in the shooting.
The gunman, who had a record of violence, was obsessed with a domestic dispute, officials said. He sent threatening text messages to his mother-in-law and texted her as recently as Sunday morning -- not long before he carried out the mass shooting, authorities said.
- "There are many ways that he could have taken care of the mother-in-law without coming with 15 loaded magazines and an assault rifle to a church," Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety said. "I think he came here with a purpose and a mission."
- Christopher Leo Longoria who went to high school with him said Kelley would focus on women's reactions and that it would "creep out the ladies." Longoria said he had recently unfriended him on Facebook because Kelley was launching into online personal attacks against his friends.
"He was also posting a lot of non-God beliefs, atheism, a lot of gun violence and a lot of weapons that he was into," Longoria told CNN's Don Lemon.
It was a question, not a statement. I saw the alleged FB screen captures when I image searched google for his Facebook account. I specifically questioned their accuracy in my post.
No, you didn't question their accuracy. You used alt-right propaganda to ask a loaded question.
Exposition:A "loaded question", like a loaded gun, is a dangerous thing. A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is "loaded" with that presumption. The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.
Since this example is a yes/no question, there are only the following two direct answers:
"Yes, I have stopped beating my wife", which entails "I was beating my wife."
"No, I haven't stopped beating my wife", which entails "I am still beating my wife."
Thus, either direct answer entails that you have beaten your wife, which is, therefore, a presupposition of the question. So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question.Some systems of parliamentary debate provide for "dividing the question", that is, splitting a complex question up into two or more simple questions. Such a move can be used to split the example as follows:
"Have you ever beaten your wife?"
"If so, are you still doing so?"
In this way, 1 can be answered directly by "no", and then the conditional question 2 does not arise.
All of which, to me, doesn't really get at the heart of the problem.
If he had been a vocal member of any of these groups but lived in ANY OTHER FIRST WORLD COUNTRY he would not have had access to the kinds of weapons he did and his death toll would have been much, much lower.
That is the f*cking problem not his allegiances, political affinity, or where he likes the cheese on his hamburger.
I went ahead and made a Mass Shooting thread for us to discuss these kinds of topics. This really should just be about gun laws.
moved post to new thread
Thanks, Jayhawker. It's also about what we can do at a local level or socially to create a safer gun environment.
This is infuriating. To think that this “alt-right” / Russian PsyOps is what we’re going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives. That there aren’t even common facts from which to have a good faith discussion.
Conservatives have never even gestured toward holding Fox News accountable for decades of politically-charged misrepresentations and countless inaccuracies, so misinformation has become standard currency for 30-40% of the country now; Breitbart and the rest are just shouting from the treehouse that's been built for them.
I have been pushing hard on my proposal to treat gun ownership like we do vehicle operation.
1) Universal registration
2) Annual inspection
3) Random inspection
4) Mandatory licensing
5) Mandatory liability insuranceDoing the above would absolutely annihilate the whole straw purchase exploit as anyone who wants to purchase a dozen guns for their felon friends would need to maintain the recurring costs of the liability insurance for each one of them. It would also make people a lot more conscientious about safe storage and responsible use when there is real and predictable cost.
As it is now, we pretty much treat every asshat that does something stupid with a gun like he is an uninsured motorist with multiple DUI's.
I'm beginning to think that we should seriously be revisiting whether or not semi-automatic firearms with high-capacity, detachable magazines should even be legal.
A lot of people would still be alive or uninjured if the rifles used in mass shootings had a very low capacity internal magazine and were bolt operated.
An AR-15 type firearm with 20, 30 round or larger magazine isn't needed for anything. If you need that many shots for hunting, you're such a poor shot that shouldn't be hunting. If you need that many rounds for home defense then you either need to move because you live in a lawless wasteland and you're probably going to clip a family member.
That leaves sport shooting and other purely recreational shooting. And I don't think that the 2nd amendment should be invoked to protect someone's hobby, especially when the only harm done would be that gun owners would have to load more frequently on the range and not be able to quickly fire off multiple rounds. Their "fun" shouldn't trump other people's lives and suffering.
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
Yes I'm aware of the inherent irony in the stauchest advocates for the 2nd amendment being among the most vehement supporters of autocratic government but that's a whole other kettle of crazy.
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
But they don't and can't. Unless the idea is that the only things that matters when one is trying to protect oneself from tyranny is the guns one has (as opposed to the capabilities of the other side). I'm not sure how many rounds it takes from a civilian-purchasable weapon to make it through tank armour, but I'm-a guess it's approximately "all of them and then some".
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
Yes I'm aware of the inherent irony in the stauchest advocates for the 2nd amendment being among the most vehement supporters of autocratic government but that's a whole other kettle of crazy.
As Chumpy_McChump said the arms that people are allowed by the government couldn't do jack to military hardware. An ar-15 isn't going to stop a tomahawk missile, or an abrams tank.
So unless people really want the general citizenry to be able to own those things they are not preventing a tyrannical government.
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
Yes I'm aware of the inherent irony in the stauchest advocates for the 2nd amendment being among the most vehement supporters of autocratic government but that's a whole other kettle of crazy.
The real irony is that the historical context of the 2A strongly indicates that it was written for precisely the opposite purpose.
It was written during the Whiskey Rebellion in which war veterans were raising up arms against their democratically elected government because they were either unable or unwilling to pay their taxes (and as Libertarians will say constantly, "taxation is theft"). It was the specific language of the 2A ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state...") accompanied by the Militia Acts of 1792 (concurrently written btw) that outline the reason the 2A was written in the first place.
President George Washington needed an army to stomp on the faces of folks who didn't want to pay their taxes.
So much for "opposing tyranny".
Maq wrote:I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
Yes I'm aware of the inherent irony in the stauchest advocates for the 2nd amendment being among the most vehement supporters of autocratic government but that's a whole other kettle of crazy.
As Chumpy_McChump said the arms that people are allowed by the government couldn't do jack to military hardware. An ar-15 isn't going to stop a tomahawk missile, or an abrams tank.
So unless people really want the general citizenry to be able to own those things they are not preventing a tyrannical government.
Well considering the military's discount rate for an Abrams tank was 5 million in 1999 dollars, and the rate for a single tomahawk missile without any of the associated launch and guidance programming hardware is $569,000 in 1999 dollars... that seems out of reach for well pretty much anyone as a citizen.
This is infuriating. To think that this “alt-right” / Russian PsyOps is what we’re going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives. That there aren’t even common facts from which to have a good faith discussion.
This is the problem with most things now. And yes Fox News is a big part of the problem.
That's why we can't even talk about solutions to climate change because one side won't even admit there's a problem, despite overwhelming evidence.
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
I have been pushing hard on my proposal to treat gun ownership like we do vehicle operation.
1) Universal registration
2) Annual inspection
3) Random inspection
4) Mandatory licensing
5) Mandatory liability insuranceDoing the above would absolutely annihilate the whole straw purchase exploit as anyone who wants to purchase a dozen guns for their felon friends would need to maintain the recurring costs of the liability insurance for each one of them. It would also make people a lot more conscientious about safe storage and responsible use when there is real and predictable cost.
As it is now, we pretty much treat every asshat that does something stupid with a gun like he is an uninsured motorist with multiple DUI's.
*finger pointing up emoji* x3
I've been saying this same thing forever. I really don't understand why we haven't done this (...mumble, mumble...weak 2nd amendment argument...mumble, mumble).
I'm not going to go into this in the detail I have before, but everyone keep in mind that we do still have our well-regulated militias. They are the various National Guards, which are the direct descendant of the original militias, after several minor and a couple major legislative changes to the definition, organization, and regulation of those militias.
The National Guards do have tanks, jets, helicopters, etc.
I'm not going to go into this in the detail I have before, but everyone keep in mind that we do still have our well-regulated militias. They are the various National Guards, which are the direct descendant of the original militias, after several minor and a couple major legislative changes to the definition, organization, and regulation of those militias.
The National Guards do have tanks, jets, helicopters, etc.
I'm perfectly fine with "If you want to keep a personal weapon you must be an active member of the national guard."
I'm pretty sure the 2nd amendment advocates we are talking about would disagree with me strenuously, possibly violently.
Paleocon wrote:I have been pushing hard on my proposal to treat gun ownership like we do vehicle operation.
1) Universal registration
2) Annual inspection
3) Random inspection
4) Mandatory licensing
5) Mandatory liability insuranceDoing the above would absolutely annihilate the whole straw purchase exploit as anyone who wants to purchase a dozen guns for their felon friends would need to maintain the recurring costs of the liability insurance for each one of them. It would also make people a lot more conscientious about safe storage and responsible use when there is real and predictable cost.
As it is now, we pretty much treat every asshat that does something stupid with a gun like he is an uninsured motorist with multiple DUI's.
*finger pointing up emoji* x3
I've been saying this same thing forever. I really don't understand why we haven't done this (...mumble, mumble...weak 2nd amendment argument...mumble, mumble).
Bringing mandatory liability insurance into the picture is a really interesting idea, and it seems like the insurance industry could potentially have a big impact in that effort. I wonder if there is enough political lobbying potential there for lawmakers to partner with insurance companies to make something like this happen. On the one hand, liability insurance for gun owners could represent a pretty sizeable market opportunity. On the other hand, I have to wonder if the potential liability there is so large that insurance companies wouldn't want to touch it. How do you scale insurance payouts for victims of gun violence? Do you frame it like life insurance, except that it's coverage paid for by gun owners for potential victims of their firearms? How do you define liability? Would punitive payouts/coverage factor in there? Would gun owners who carry liability insurance and are determined to be at fault still be subject to civil suits from victims? It seems like a lot of these questions might have already been worked out for things like auto insurance situations and homeowners situations, but I wonder if there are aspects of gun ownership and incident liability that are unique?
mwdowns wrote:Paleocon wrote:I have been pushing hard on my proposal to treat gun ownership like we do vehicle operation.
1) Universal registration
2) Annual inspection
3) Random inspection
4) Mandatory licensing
5) Mandatory liability insuranceDoing the above would absolutely annihilate the whole straw purchase exploit as anyone who wants to purchase a dozen guns for their felon friends would need to maintain the recurring costs of the liability insurance for each one of them. It would also make people a lot more conscientious about safe storage and responsible use when there is real and predictable cost.
As it is now, we pretty much treat every asshat that does something stupid with a gun like he is an uninsured motorist with multiple DUI's.
*finger pointing up emoji* x3
I've been saying this same thing forever. I really don't understand why we haven't done this (...mumble, mumble...weak 2nd amendment argument...mumble, mumble).
Bringing mandatory liability insurance into the picture is a really interesting idea, and it seems like the insurance industry could potentially have a big impact in that effort. I wonder if there is enough political lobbying potential there for lawmakers to partner with insurance companies to make something like this happen. On the one hand, liability insurance for gun owners could represent a pretty sizeable market opportunity. On the other hand, I have to wonder if the potential liability there is so large that insurance companies wouldn't want to touch it. How do you scale insurance payouts for victims of gun violence? Do you frame it like life insurance, except that it's coverage paid for by gun owners for potential victims of their firearms? How do you define liability? Would punitive payouts/coverage factor in there? Would gun owners who carry liability insurance and are determined to be at fault still be subject to civil suits from victims? It seems like a lot of these questions might have already been worked out for things like auto insurance situations and homeowners situations, but I wonder if there are aspects of gun ownership and incident liability that are unique?
I'm not sure it would balance out for the insurance companies, since guns are relatively low cost items I don't think they could demand premiums like you would for car insurance, BUT the pay out for a claim would be astronomical, just the immediate emergency care for a gunshot would can easily run into the 7 figures, and then you add rehabilitation and chronic problems stemming from the incident... one claim is big money, much bigger than with car insurance.
I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.
Yes I'm aware of the inherent irony in the stauchest advocates for the 2nd amendment being among the most vehement supporters of autocratic government but that's a whole other kettle of crazy.
Except more and more politicians, pundits, and gun owners are expressing the idea that using firearms to overthrow the a legitimately elected government would be acceptable if they *really* disagreed with the government's policies. Mentally the bar has been tremendously lowered from "Uncle Sam's turning into an oppressive sadist who's crushing my freedoms and it needs" to stop to "Uncle Sam's giving too much to minorities and is secretly controlled by the globalists and SJWs so we need to take back what's ours."
Either way the counter to that is to have anyone buying a firearm sign a pledge that states, when the time comes, they'll eagerly fulfill their constitutional duty and slaughter as many police, state troopers, FBI agents, and US soldiers as they possible can with said firearm. And when the inevitably say "I don't want a gun to fight a bloody revolution. I just want it for fun," then we can finally have an honest conversation about firearms in America.
In the absence of all of the tracking the NRA has made legally impossible I can't think of a way to make insurance really work other than making a huge national pool that pays for shooting victims, that all gun owners pay into with a separate weapon and ammunition tax.
With actual metrics, you could do a lot of more effective and interesting things. For example if you tracked the gun store of origin of all gun crimes you could do some of the payment that way, incentivizing such stores to take their checks more seriously.
On the very high regulation end you could imagine a very high fine for the registered owner if a gun was ever found with another person. That fine could only be escaped if you had reported the gun stolen promptly and had your residence checked to confirm that you actually had appropriate locked storage for your weapons.
If weapons were still being trafficked around too much you could mandate that all gun owners bring in their guns every 5 or so years, to ensure that they still own them and haven't sold or lost them on the down low.
Part of the responsibility of owning a gun is a responsibility that your dangerous object doesn't get taken by someone else. If you aren't prepared to be responsible for that then play with something else.
With all this talk of insurance (which I love intellectually, but feels utterly impractical for reasons noted upthread), it leads me to ask, why isn't there more private litigation going on? America being a land of lawyers and all...I would assume that when damage is incurred from negligent gun use, there'd be lawsuits flying left, right and center?
baaaah quote edit
Because of the NRA we don't have a national gun database, it may be pretty hard in some cases to actually determine where the gun came from. Also depending on the State that that happened in the legal requirements for how to store your gun may be lax enough that there really isn't any legal negligence.
Took me awhile to find the information, and it's actually way worse than I thought. Only 11 states appear to have rules about proper storage (or at least trigger locks) for your firearms, and most of them are very limited.
If I lived without any children or people unable to legally use firearms and left a weapon out, that is illegal in exactly one State: Massachussetts. If I did have people in the household that were restricted from firearm use, then that is illegal in California, Connecticut, and New York. But even in those States if I lived alone or with most adults, left my gun on the coffee table and someone stole it, that is absolutely not negligence.
In the other 46 States I don't even have those laws to follow.
With all this talk of insurance (which I love intellectually, but feels utterly impractical for reasons noted upthread), it leads me to ask, why isn't there more private litigation going on? America being a land of lawyers and all...I would assume that when damage is incurred from negligent gun use, there'd be lawsuits flying left, right and center?
Is that the kind of thing the general public would be aware of? Your first question implies that there isn't a lot of litigation in this area. How do you know?
Assuming there isn't, the civil litigation that seems to most closely fit this situation is personal injury. My admittedly uninformed impression is that a majority of gun violence ends up with the victim dead, not injured. So the few reasons for litigation would be a) replacement of lost income from an adult family member or b) punitive. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. Maybe those are difficult cases to justify.
Is that the kind of thing the general public would be aware of? Your first question implies that there isn't a lot of litigation in this area. How do you know?
I totally don't. That's part of the reason I'm asking if anyone else does. It's certainly not something I've seen talked about or even alluded to in the many many articles I've read around the topic.
I'm not sure it would balance out for the insurance companies, since guns are relatively low cost items I don't think they could demand premiums like you would for car insurance, BUT the pay out for a claim would be astronomical, just the immediate emergency care for a gunshot would can easily run into the 7 figures, and then you add rehabilitation and chronic problems stemming from the incident... one claim is big money, much bigger than with car insurance.
Yes, but Paleocon is talking about liability insurance. That's legally mandated for drivers, and I don't think your liability coverage has anything to do with the value of your car. Requiring liability insurance means if you go do something dumb with your car, you're covered for a pre-determined amount of financial damages. The cost of that insurance doesn't depend on how nice your car is.
Insuring your car/gun itself is a different thing entirely, not what I'm talking about. I agree with you that the insurance payout for gun violence/damage might be hard to work out, but people can suffer some pretty critical injuries in vehicle accidents. People are killed due to DUI or negligent drivers - how does automobile liability insurance factor in there? The auto liability insurance model might not be a bad place to start.
The first place this falls apart for me is how you enforce compliance. It's easier with vehicles, because you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, which is required every year, and it's pretty easy to get caught if you don't do it unless you don't drive the car. There would have to be some sort of mandatory registration when you buy a gun, an annual renewal with proof of insurance, etc. That gets complicated and costly really quickly.
Pages