• Sheriffs are forming "2nd Amendment sanctuaries" refusing to enforce gun control
    285 replies, posted
Okay, pet peeve: the 'but you're not a well-regulated militia!' argument really just betrays a lack of research. The founders didn't want a standing army. They had just seen what a standing army enabled. They recognized a need for common defense though, so they included a means for the people to be called to service as a national militia. Every other amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees rights to the people. None of them provide rights to the government. The idea that the 2nd Amendment is saying you can be armed if you're part of a government-run militia is essentially saying that in contrast to all the other rights in the Bill of Rights, and in contrast to the express purpose of the Bill of Rights, the 2nd Amendment is granting rights to a government entity. That's bogus. The 2nd Amendment states that because a well-functioning militia composed of the people is necessary for the common defense, the right of the people to own and bear arms is guaranteed- both to provide for the common defense if called to service, and to ensure that the people maintain military power, rather than delegating that entirely to the federal government. Also, if you're eligible for Selective Service, you're already part of the Militia. See: Militia Acts of 1794. And you know what? I don't think any of this really matters. The Constitution was written nearly two and a half centuries ago. It's been amended before. So why make an argument invoking the intent and wording of the Constitution to begin with?
We don't have to rigidly interpret the constitution in such a way. The insistence on doing so is why our constitution is such a piece of shit document
Switzerland does licensing and that's fine if it's handled correctly. I think a properly handled licensing system would dramatically reduce accidental deaths and injuries, and instill better respect for guns in people who get them. The problem in the United States is that officials are allowed to just not do their jobs, which means licenses stop being issued arbitrarily if someone disagrees with them. See: marriage licenses You're already required to get a background check to purchase a firearm from a dealer. I've argued time and time again (and I think the general gun owning population is behind me on this) that private citizens should have the ability to run background checks before transferring firearms. Currently, that's not legal. We don't have the option to do it. It's not that we don't want to. That makes no sense at all. If you have ten people shooting on a range, there's no way to figure out whose cases are whose, and even if you could, this law would make it impossible to actually start buying ammunition since you wouldn't have any cases to turn in.
ok guess I'll be the one to do it, the notion that obsessing over how efficient one can theoretically be at killing things is a god-given right or even a legitimate hobby deeply confuses me, even as an American who grew up with/around guns. That people go to these lengths to stick it to people who want to solve an obvious societal issue with reasonable regulations, to me, seems more like selfish macho posturing than reasonable fear for security, which is in reality the only purpose of the 2A
The laws already on the books are plenty. They aren't being enforced. Adding more to the pile isn't going to fix that. The most recent spate of mass shooters had one thing in common: all of them had dirt on their records that not only should have prevented them from buying a gun, but flagged them for arrest for even trying. Yet all of them purchased firearms from federally licensed dealers and went and shot people up. This isn't a failure of the laws - it's a failure of the system. The FBI failed to perform its due diligence in running their checks, and the agencies (such as the Department of Defense) that should have reported things like their dishonorable discharges or mental health problems either didn't report them or misreported them. How is requiring even more background checks going to solve this problem if the ones that are already being run are being mishandled? Why don't we start by unfucking the system so that the laws we have get enforced?
private citizens should not be allowed to sell firearms
So what, if I buy a gun, I'm stuck with it forever?
You can sell it back to a dealer or if the gov. wants to do a buyback program. Maybe sell it THROUGH a dealer
So if I live in the boonies, I have to drive 3 hours to the nearest licensed dealer in order to list my firearm on consignment so my next-door neighbor can also drive 3 hours to purchase it? Why shouldn't I just be able to call the FBI and run the same NICS check that the dealer would run? What does having the dealer present change?
What the fuck are you doing in this thread dude I want to say you're better than this but you are rapidly convincing me otherwise.
Perhaps I was not specific. I am unfamiliar with what is currently in place in terms of these checks. But this idea that prevails among pro-2A activists that any reform or response to an obvious problem is unconstitutional and discriminatory is blatantly selfish. There is nothing unconstitutional about raising the age to 21 and is a reasonable measure that has made progress with other issues in the past. I also agree that we should unfuck the system in place, because it is obvious that it is failing us, but at the same time I think we need to, as a country, reconsider the 2A and take guns off this divine pedestal where nobody can fundamentally criticize them, which is why the left has to agree only to extra steps rather than systemic change.
The federal age to purchase handguns -- which are pretty much the only important guns when we're considering gun crime -- is already 21. Part of the problem is those who want to impose restrictions don't even know that many of the restrictions they're clamoring for already exist.
I want to be able to track every gun in the country. I don't think we should sacrifice safety for convenience.
Please show me where I demanded more checks.
Restrictions, checks, they all fall under the same banner. You wanted a check on their age, first of all. One that already exists, mind you, but you didn't know that. Which isn't a point in your favor.
Canada had a national registry for two decades. They abolished it because it was an expensive waste that was never credited with a single successful prosecution. What additional safety would a registry provide?
It would allow for the obvious next step which is confiscation.
Okay, that still doesn't address the meat of my post, but I think I have a very oppositional view so I understand that we will have to disagree
Actually, you will very quickly start running into legal problems if you put a constitutional right behind an arbitrary age gate that doesn't align with the legally-recognized age of majority. Also, what exactly is being solved by raising the minimum age? We shouldn't just be throwing random restrictions in place out of a need to 'do something'.
That's some wild projection there bucko.
The meat of your post is "gun owners are unreasonable and argue against any commonsense restrictions", but your own post demonstrates that you don't have a goddamn clue what you're talking about. If you don't even know what restrictions are currently in place -- if you haven't the faintest goddamn idea -- you don't get to slander an entire group of people by saying they're unreasonable.
I mean the brain isn't fully developed until the age of ~25, specifically the parts of the prefrontal cortex involving decision making and risk assessment. That's an indisputable fact.
So we should move voting to 25 too right
oh, it's happened any time we've had a registry (who is we?), and they've never helped anyone? I think you need to provide some sources. You need to slow your roll and stop flaming.
If saying that someone doesn't know what they're talking about is flaming, we have a very different idea of what flaming is. "we" being the United States. Not a difficult thing to figure out. I know you're smart enough to do that, given that we're talking about the United States, and both you and myself are from the United States. Come on. As for sources: Hawaii tried to use its mandatory gun registry to forcibly disarm all medical marijuana patients That's 1 more source than you've provided. Where is your evidence that gun registries have ever, or would ever, prevent crime?
There are hundreds of federal gun laws on the books. As a gun owner, you have to be at least familiar with the lion's share of them, on top of any laws your state, county, or city/town might have. While many of these laws make perfect sense and are totally reasonable and nobody minds having them around, you also have laws that allow for - by way of example - shoe strings to become legally classified as machine guns if in the proximity of certain types of guns. That is, the shoe string becomes a machine gun as far as the law is concerned, not the actual gun. So the immediate response from a gun owner, who's familiar with the laws already in place, is to balk at the suggestion of adding more, especially if the person proposing them is making a proposition that's already on the books, or would only serve to hassle people who'd bother to follow them (like the brass exchange thing - what difference would that make to someone already bent on breaking the law in more serious ways?). The batch we've got now is a mixed bag - there are good laws on the books, good laws that make sense and are clearly helpful, and also a great many that seem to be written just to hassle gun owners and arbitrarily make lawfully owning guns a pain in the ass. No left-leaning lawmakers seem to be willing to compromise with us by easing back some of the more ridiculous laws, but they all want to add their own to the pile. Some are fine, sure, but even the most logical extra steps are seen as part of a continuous erosion of our rights because we never get anything back. There is a constant looming threat of jailtime for making a good-faith attempt to follow the law but making an honest mistake. In my case, I could actually be declared a felon literally at any time if the ATF decides my C96 is no longer exempt from NFA (it has a stock, which technically makes it an SBR, but they decided for no particular reason that it's exempt and can go back on that without notifying me or even posting a public statement). This is a meme that's familiar to all gun owners: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/294604797217079298/552945862892978206/9k.png As for myself, I think the second amendment is a bit dusty too, but I'm reluctant (as are other gun owners) to offer or allow an olive branch to be offered WRT modernizing it, because every time in the past fifty years gun owners have agreed to a compromise it's been used to abuse us. A recent example is New York and the SAFE Act, where gun owners were baited into consenting to a registry with the provision that it could not be used to confiscate their guns. Once the guns were registered, the law was modified and a buttload of guns were made illegal, then previously lawful owners of those weapons were served notices that they had 30 days to comply or they'd become felons.
I don't need to provide sources because I didn't make a single claim. You claimed that universally, all registries are used to ban. You need to substantiate that claim better than one instance in Hawaii where marijuana patient registration lead to marijuana patients having their firearm access restricted.
I cited New York's above, but it's been done in basically every Commonwealth country as well - the UK and Australia specifically, but also including Canada to a degree.
Pro 2A activists might have been too general but it certainly does not mean "gun owners" as a whole, and I was clearly referring to the article, so this seems a bit dramatic. I can admit that I don't know the fine print about gun laws while still voicing my disagreement with gun culture, because as I said, it's not necessarily that I disagree over which regulations are correct or effective, it's that I disagree with this attitude that it isn't something we can compromise on because muh constitution.
As far as gun control goes, Democrats are thoroughly the reason there's no compromise. The entire history of gun control thus far has been no-compromise. It's been "this and this and this is now illegal" with nothing gained on the pro-gun camp. Their idea of compromise is that we voluntarily give up some rights in exchange for not having all of them stripped from us forcefully. If you want a compromise, you have to make an effort to do a real one, don't just pile more bans and restrictions on and give nothing in return. There's a lot to be compromised on, for example we could have removed the restrictions on sound suppressors in exchange for the ban on bump stocks, but instead we lost bump stocks and gained nothing. That's why gun owners don't want to compromise. And then you have people like proboardslol, a dime a dozen, using disingenuous tactics to argue their case. The anti-gun side using the very same tactics the GOP uses to argue against abortion or gay marriage, a lot of fear and bullshit.
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