Said "broad" (whom I won't link to) immediately struck me as someone with a condescending attitude that said, "I'm so reasonable, you must agree with me... How could you not agree with me? What kind of knuckle-dragging Neanderthal are you???" She seemed not really interested in anything someone might post, unless it was complete agreement that she is 100% right. The way I read some of her questions, like:
Will you continue a reasonable discussion towards an end that might lead somewhere or is this an exercise in futility?Is pretty much semantically equivalent to "are you still beating your wife?". How about this gem of a question:
Do you believe that 30,000 gun deaths a year is too many?What kind of intellectual garbage is that? It depends on how many "needed killing". Are you including people that the police killed? Are you counting "children" the way that the gun-control nuts usually do, by including 18 year old gang bangers who die in drug wars? That is too meaningless a question to have any rational response to.
Like every gun control freak I've come across, she's too concerned with the thing to consider the psycho holding it.
Still, I find it an irresistible meme that I can't get out of my head. I'm all for "reasonable" gun laws, but I'll bet anything that I find reasonable will scare her to death. First of all, I believe the logical, ethical and even scientific argument for gun control is done. Their side has completely lost. John Lott has been proven right over and over again: "More Guns = Less Crime". When Formerly Great Britain destroyed guns and rounded up family heirlooms, they were rewarded by going from middle of the pack rates to the highest violent crime rate in the EU, and one of the worst in the world. In the first year after Heller, violent crime was down 25% in DC, as opposed to down about 10% in similarly sized cities that allowed firearms.
I think gun sales laws are too restrictive now. I think the whole setup of all sales having to go through an FFL who can only send it across state lines to another FFL just perpetuates a protected market and doesn't do any good for anybody other than FFLs. What good does it do - if you're not a gun dealer? Why can't I buy a gun online from Bud's or Impact or someone else and have it sent to me? With an encryption system, I can prove who I am online just as easily as I can at a store, and we can even do an NCIS check without invoking the whole FFL system.
Let's start here: any adult can walk into a sporting goods store in most places and walk out with a shotgun or a rifle with no waiting period. But if I wanted to buy an AR-15 or a Mossberg 500 from the factory or a store in another city, why does it have to go through an FFL's hands? Why can't I order a rifle or shotgun from an online gun store, or even an Amazon.com kind of "online superstore" and have it shipped to my house? What advantage is there to society from shipping it to an FFL? In consumer goods, your local camera shop, say, really does have to compete with the big guys in New York. Gun shops don't have that. I can see how gun shops might really like this setup. They get an easy 20 bucks for filling out the form and "receiving" your shipment, but I don't think there's any value added to us or society.
We should never again allow a stupid "mean looking weapons ban" to pass. I read that the number of assault rifles involved in crimes was 0.1% or some tiny number like that. I'll take a bet that the number of crimes involving rifles like a Remington 700 or other hunting rifle is essentially zero. The number of crimes you'd prevent is meaningless, so all it does is hassle people who like shooting those little rifles.
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| There - not in the least bit scary looking. |
I realize this is pipe dream stuff that has a snowball's chance in Florida of ever passing, but our current system really doesn't make sense to me. I realize guns are deadly. But so are kitchen knives (how many crimes involve those?), gas barbecues, and on and on, up to cars and trucks. I think the laws we have now are beyond unreasonable. Are there problems in what I propose? Probably, but I don't think there's anything unsolvable in there.
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| There, now, hoplophobes. It's so cute, how could it possibly hurt you? |
I have long believed that there are only 3 general types of killing:
ReplyDelete1. Deplorable,
2. Justifiable and
3. Laudable
Murder is type 1. Self-defense is type 2. And, hunting for food is type 2.
But, for the guy or gal who just plain needs to be killed, there is a third category, laudable.
Category 3 may also start to apply to politicians, if they continue to ignore the will of the people. Would anyone today, with prescient hindsight, think it other than laudable had Hitler died in the mid-1930's, or even in the bunker from the exploding briefcase, instead of much later, of a self-inflicted .32 ACP pistol bullet, after first taking out 12 Million innocents first? (Hitler was a socialist, remember!) Had a laudable killing taken place before or about the time of KristallNacht, a lot of category 1 (deplorable) killing could have been avoided.
- G
III
I'm still trying to understand why there are no NICS checks or three day cooling off periods for buying golf clubs, ever since the former Mrs. Woods went up side Tiger's head with a five iron.
ReplyDeleteMikeH.
I suspect the motive behind transfers through an FFL is the same motive behind closing the "gun show loophole" - and it doesn't have anything to do with "public safety". Its about tracking and databasing. When the FFL transfers the gun to you there is paperwork and he is required to keep that paperwork pretty much forever. If we weren't required to go through the FFL then how would the .gov know who has the guns? Sure there's no "registration" at this time, but because of the federal paperwork hoops there is a huge, albeit untapped, database of who owns what just waiting for the right law to get passed.
ReplyDeleteWow, some great comments here.
ReplyDeleteEvent Horizon - my point is they don't need FFLs if you fill out the equivalent of the 4473 form online. There is nothing that can be done with paper and filling out forms that can't be done online without the whole FFL layer. All you need is secure ID, which is easy today. The FFL system is just adding a layer of people who are obsolete, but have a vested interest in keeping the system going. The whole system is designed to reflect the way things were done in the 1930s. The world has changed.
The way I see it, there is no benefit to our country from the entire BATF system. Doesn't affect crime, doesn't deter criminals from stealing guns, and simply hassles the law-abiding. I'd rather see the whole thing gone, but replacing it with an online version would be simple and an easy first step.
MikeH - I'm guessing the reasons might include that more congress critters are golfers than recreational shooters. Ever read the humor writer Dave Barry? Once a week when there's some goofy story about someone being killed by a banana or something, he advocates for a 3 day waiting period.
AnonymousG (good name for a rap singer, BTW) - Good summary. Having grown up in Miami when it was still a southern city, and then in other, smaller southern cities, I always thought the "he needed killin'" defense was regular case law!
Do I think 30,000 gun deaths a year is too many? I think 1 "gun death" ever is too many. Even in the self-defense ones, someone put the defender in danger, and that's a deplorable situation.
ReplyDeleteNaturally, the real question going unwritten there is "Don't you think x gun deaths a year is enough reason to justify stripping everyone of a natural right?" When you voice it truthfully like that...