Dem congressman: Force gun owners to get rid of assault weapons - Polidicks

Yes, and my claim is that "Nobody's coming for your guns" is never meant to mean literally those words. And even if we're charitable for a moment and assume that is meant literally, and you've disproved it, so what? Someone somewhere wants to take your guns. Am I supposed to donate 10% of my money to the NRA now and go protest? No, because one person, even one politician (unless we were living under a dictator and it was that dictator we were considering) is enough to present a serious threat to private gun ownership in general without a large amount of support elsewhere. So either you're responding to a literal claim so weak that its disproof means nothing of any importance, or you're responding to the less literal meaning of "there is no significant effort by people in power to outright take your guns," which may or may not be true, but this particular event is not sufficient evidence either way. For first half, that probably is in fact the case, but this is not sufficient evidence of that in and of itself. For second half, see above.

Typical. California doesn't know shit about guns.

This is true, and honestly I wish I had a better solution to this problem. When it comes to primary votes I'm going to go out of my way to avoid voting for politicians with gun control, or at least those who don't want to work with gun ownership groups to develop well-researched and effective measures that don't shit on gun rights and I'd suggest anyone else involved in deciding which dems get into office do the same I s'pose. If there were a situation where it actually looked like democrats as a collective were prepared to push through legislation like what this man proposes, I'd probably be out there protesting it. But I can't vote for Republicans in good conscience either, at least until they reverse their stance on climate change or at least dump coal, stop pushing fossil fuels, and propose a nuclear-based power plan going forwards. Doesn't even have to be some sweeping mega-enviro thing for me either, just carbon emission based stuff. If they were to do that, I'd probably be more open to the party as a whole even as much as I hate their social policy, question their economic policy, and am aghast at the general face that the party's shown over the course of the past two years. But I view climate disruption as a possible existential threat and the unwillingness to tackle it on their end, and outright sabotage efforts to deal with it, makes me feel fucking ill sometimes. I wish conservatives would realize just how bad a fucked up climate would be for their interests as well. If the places where you can effectively farm change, and that means social upheaval and immigration surges. It pisses me off because there are places where normal people can compromise and can probably agree on decent courses of action, but then fuckwits like this come along and poison the well. It's immensely frustrating.

I notice you ignored grenadiac's extremely well-argued post to focus instead on an easy shot.

I didn't even seen Grenadiac's post, I clicked the notification to catbarf's and didn't browse the whole thread, but thanks for inserting yourself smugly into a discussion unrelated to you like most of your posts I see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoFKskvSq4

At this point I don't even know who to vote for next. Everyone is a fucking extremist now.

I'll keep this brief and not break it down into 50 different fine points since it's finals season and I shouldn't get embroiled in a political discussion on FP all day: I can empathize with the desire to cling to 2A as a gun rights advocate, I just don't agree with it, nor do I think it promotes sensible behavior. I don't think you or I have a natural, inalienable right to own guns in any but a legal sense, and I resent the fact that 2A allows gun owners to act like we're not allowed to even question whether private gun ownership should be allowed. I think this is nonsense. There are developed nations which get along just fine with much less widespread gun ownership than the US, and don't have seemingly-constant mass killings like we do. That's what gets me really incensed, acting like questioning whether things would be better without guns makes you a dangerous enemy, and your ownership guns entitles you to threaten other people with violence (not saying you specifically are doing that, but referring the "you can take them from my cold, dead hands" mentality). So as you can tell, I'm not a gun advocate, but I don't think of myself as being an anti-gun advocate either. I actually agree with the idea of the Framers in general that revolt through violent means should be possible if necessary, but I think a lot of conservative gun owners do not take that idea seriously at all. They claim to, but really they are just gun fetishists who use the idea of armed rebellion as a violent masturbatory aid (again, not claiming this is you, I'm referring to a general phenomenon). To summarize, I think restrictions on gun ownership should be stronger than now, but not necessarily a ban, but I would not be outright opposed to a blanket ban. Forgive me, but I am not terribly sympathetic to the plight of gun owners when most of what I see is people who have what amounts to a hobby involving inherently dangerous objects, and reject all attempts to regulate them even in the fact of mass murder and general constant gun violence. Finally, in reference to what we were discussing before, I don't think there is a serious effort in the US to ban guns outright. There is a lot of stupid legislation put forward that I think damages any attempt at an actually good compromise, but I can't sympathize at all with the idea that this should justify "no compromise" as a defensible position.

While I generally support stricter gun control measures, nothing that requires current gun owners to actively forfeit the weaponry that they already own is going to work. There is no easy and clean short term solution to this. We must consider longer term plans that seek to limit the production and introduction of new weapons, restrict the private sale and transfer of existing weaponry, and slowly reduce the massive stockpile of existing weaponry through voluntary forfeitures / buyback programs, seizure of improperly licensed/registered weaponry, and so forth. It's just not possible to completely remove firearms from the United States, especially not in a short period of time. It is still possible to erode the number of weapons through a long term strategy of attrition. If we can reduce the massive availability of firearms, we can see a reduction in gun crime. That can and should be combined with other measures designed to increase public security, healthcare, mental health, criminal justice reform, and other social factors. You need a holistic plan addressing all the major factors of gun violence in order to see the greatest possible impact, though even then it should be noted that it's simply not possible to prevent all violence.

How familiar are you with what's currently on the books re: gun legislation? There is a lot more to the process of buying guns, and far more limitations on what types of guns are available and to whom, than most people think. There are also developed nations with comparable firearm ownership rates (guns per capita is the go-to stat, but Americans tend to own multiple guns so that's a bit misleading), with similar or overall lighter restrictions, that have much lower crime rates, as well as developed nations with complete or near complete firearms bans with higher crime rates. Proliferation cannot be reliably linked to crime rates. That's why I scowl at measures that set out to reduce proliferation for the sake of it. To someone like me, it means the very real possibility that I will have to be complicit in the destruction of historical articles. I would not be happy if someone came and took my AR-15, but I could get over it. But my 101 year old prototype C96 is also an assault weapon under some criteria. The idea that I would have to turn something like that over to be destroyed under false pretenses because someone couldn't be bothered to do their research when writing laws frankly churns my stomach. I don't really lean on 2A. For one, it's already been violated in too many ways to mean anything in practice. Two, the idea of widespread armed revolt seems unrealistic, if only because I believe the military would stand with the people against a hypothetical tyrannical government. All 2A means to me is that the Framers thought the right to bear arms was important because we might need to raise a civilian militia at some point. Nor do I consider the right to bear arms a natural or "God-given" right. I don't believe in that stuff. To me, rights are granted by a social contract. You have the right to speak your mind because the majority agrees you ought to be able to. We have the right to bear arms because the majority agrees you ought to be able to. Clearly these rights do not exist everywhere so they can be neither natural nor granted by some deity. It's just a matter of everyone agreeing. What I want is people to stop doing this thing where they decide based on a gut feeling that guns are bad and then look for reasons to justify that. That approach causes people to subconsciously twist facts and statistics when arguing and it makes it very difficult to have a conversation... good-faith discussions are the only way to solve this problem. I am not a hardline 2Aer but I don't see the intrinsic harm in firearms ownership either. My firearms collection is mostly a subcategory of a much larger private antiques collection. I don't plan to overthrow the government with my trench gun or anything. I just don't understand who those guns are hurting by existing under my control. They do represent a rather large and expensive segment of my property and are also some of the most history-rich items I have, and I am very protective of my antiquities in general. To me it's clear that the gun violence issue isn't a gun problem; it's an extension of a larger violence problem in this country, which can be closely linked to other issues but doesn't reliably line up with arms proliferation statistics. So while I'm not a "gun nut" I really think this is an issue that needs to be handled more delicately and fairly than it is.

Then stop shooting us then lol

Moderately, though as you can probably make out from the post, gun control is not an issue on which I have a completely firm stance, because it is not one of my top political issues, so I don't follow things religiously. I agree that stronger gun control = less homicide and vice versa is not a hard and fast law. There are too many factors beyond gun control which contribute significantly, but can you source your claim that it cannot be reliably linked to crime rates? It's not hard and fast but almost no such rule is in a sociological issue, but that doesn't mean there is no correlation. Here is a collection of citations by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center which would seem to contradict that claim. I think measures allowing historically important gun collections would fall on the side "most people considering stricter gun control but not outright bans would support this" anyway. Fair, I think your stance is reasonable (or at least more reasonable than the one that I was mentioning previously) but we were discussing why people do lean on 2A, so I think my criticism is still valid. There are plenty of people out their who think their right to guns is not up for question, and are willing to defend it violently if necessary (or claim to be).

I'm about to get off work and ironically I have to stop by the gun store on the way home so it'll be a while before I'm home, but I'll try to remember to reply later. I do (or did) have sources for my stuff, I'll just have to dig them up, maybe someone else will get to it before I do and save me the trouble though.

Well, it isn't. Now, in order to take privately owned vehicle onto public places, you have to have a license, being driver's licenses, car registration, and insurance. For firearms it is the same way in the majority of states, being that you need a concealed carry permit in order to carry your privately owned weapon in public. You must pay for this license and the process to go through it, and some cost over a hundred dollars. Financial barriers do exist. However, we are arguing against the large increase in that financial barrier that would happen.

The amazing thing is that the founding fathers wanted a flexible constitution that wouldn't be worshiped like the bible and forever marred in stone

That's what they said they wanted, but the systems they put in place for altering the Constitution are an enormous roadblock.

Sometimes I wonder if we're ever going to see another constitutional amendment again. The amount of political division currently in place seems like it'd make it nearly impossible.

I really fucking doubt it. Obstructionism has been the political meta for decades now.

I'm okay with the dated one we have now, even if the parties could agree to hold a convention, the amount of special interests that would want to tilt a new consitution towards their favor would be scary and dangerous.

I'd be fine with the current Bill of Rights if it had an Equal Rights Amendment.

It doesn't need one - it's pretty specific about who gets rights. The problem is folks treat the Constitution like the Bible in more ways than one - to include selective reading. "All men are created equal" is pretty unambiguous.

We absolutely need an amendment that affirms equal rights for ethnic groups, genders, and sexual orientations. Of course that'll never happen because the icky gays.

Yeah, too bad you could literally deny service to transgender people up until less than a month ago solely because they were trans, and unless something has changed recently they can and will be denied treatment on doctor's moral grounds.

Let's not do this please

What is confusing you? The text is already there for it. It's not being used correctly. That's the problem.

Do you have a suggestion for magically convincing people to interpret the Bill of Rights the way you want? Because I don't think it's going to happen. The Bill of Rights needs to specifically outline equal rights protections, or else people will just squabble over it.

If you don't want people responding to your public posts on a public forum maybe don't publicly post them on a public forum.

The constitution is literally designed to be fairly easy to amend to address things exactly like this, I see 0 issue with that. If amendments help people, where is the issue?

I don't have an issue with it, I just think it'd be redundant. What's on the book already should be enforced.

It's not being enforced because it's too vague. The Supreme Court has ruled against the current BOR giving equal rights, therefore the BOR needs to be more specific.