The Coming Of Firearm Confiscation In The United States

[Paul G.]

As I have said before: the NRA and others have decided that the death of twenty innocents outweighs the civil rights of even one gun owner.

It is not an either or proposition. Furthermore, for some reason you give life and purpose to an inanimate object. How is that...please do explain. Had he used a 24oz framing hammer to bash in their skulls would you be calling for the abolition of framing hammers? Let us suppose he brought a gun firing 3 1/2 inch long rounds from an essentially silent weapon with a 100 round magazine capacity. Granted said weapon would be of fairly short range, but deadly nonetheless. Do you think such weapons should also be banned? Or do you think the marginal utility of nail guns would outweigh the potential deaths of 20 innocent children?

 

 

Why do we issue M4/M16s with high-capacity magazines and not nail guns, framing hammers to Soldiers and Marines? Why not 5-10 rd magazines?

[nitflegal]

As I have said before: the NRA and others have decided that the death of twenty innocents outweighs the civil rights of even one gun owner.

It is not an either or proposition. Furthermore, for some reason you give life and purpose to an inanimate object. How is that...please do explain. Had he used a 24oz framing hammer to bash in their skulls would you be calling for the abolition of framing hammers? Let us suppose he brought a gun firing 3 1/2 inch long rounds from an essentially silent weapon with a 100 round magazine capacity. Granted said weapon would be of fairly short range, but deadly nonetheless. Do you think such weapons should also be banned? Or do you think the marginal utility of nail guns would outweigh the potential deaths of 20 innocent children?

 

 

Why do we issue M4/M16s with high-capacity magazines and not nail guns, framing hammers to Soldiers and Marines? Why not 5-10 rd magazines?

 

Probably because they have to go up against those with similar weapons. If the second amendment is to protect firearm rights to allow one to defend oneself against the government and criminals, I have no issue at all going to only nail guns and hammers if someone can come up with a fool-proof way to limit the same to criminals and an abusive government functionary.

 

Matt

[Colin]

As I have said before: the NRA and others have decided that the death of twenty innocents outweighs the civil rights of even one gun owner.

 

I used to wonder why the NRA was so stubborn, now having taken part in the fight up here I realize why. The gun control nuts will never, ever settle for reasonable regulations, that's just the first step in the quest to rid us of all guns. This not tinfoil stuff, this is what they say, google Allan Rock and Wendy Cukier. These types are like religious fundamentalists they will not stop till they achieve their aims and likely that won't stop them either. What the gun control nuts want is to get the wedge in the door, so they can batter it down. In fact I blame the gun control nuts for creating a situation where the NRA can not allow any crack in their position for fear of creating a landslide of legal and political controls and regulations.

 

 

As for the NRA, they have been big on training for along time http://training.nra.org/ http://eddieeagle.nra.org/ http://training.nra....fety-rules.aspx

 

funny how the media does not mention any of this.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Colin

[Rocky Davis]

That's because slaves were people and not property. Are guns not property? Even when this country was founded there was a problem seen with slavery.

 

Wrong. They were considered property (a man that owned 20 slaves was considered to have a net worth more than a man that owned one). Later on, they were legally judged to be worth 3/5 of a free man towards representation in Congress.

 

http://www.historyis...s%20Placard.pdf

Edited December 31, 2012 by Rocky Davis

[X-Files]

The gun control nuts will never, ever settle for reasonable regulations, that's just the first step in the quest to rid us of all guns.

 

And this is the line in the sand.

[Simon Tan]

The Media is by definition a Westphalian player. It will always have a dangerous relationship with the State. This is to preserve it's turf against the disorganized media which is anathema to the notion of a small band of gatekeepers to news and opinion. It reached its zenith in the 20th century with the broadcast media but is now slowly dying the face of mass access technologies. Hence the nexus between the State and media to slow this, be it the PRC or the USA. A mobile data device and the gun are the nightmare of every State. See.....Libya, Syria, Mali etc. These though are only the tools. The battleground is the mind.

[rmgill]

That's because slaves were people and not property. Are guns not property? Even when this country was founded there was a problem seen with slavery.

 

Wrong. They were considered property (a man that owned 20 slaves was considered to have a net worth more than a man that owned one). Later on, they were legally judged to be worth 3/5 of a free man towards representation in Congress.

 

http://www.historyis...s%20Placard.pdf

 

Perhaps I didn't phrase that very well.

 

They were people who were considered property, which was an abhorrent thing. They were and are people. Treating people as property is a serious problem. Did we not also abolish indentured servitude at some point along that path?

[rmgill]

The gun control nuts will never, ever settle for reasonable regulations, that's just the first step in the quest to rid us of all guns.

 

And this is the line in the sand.

 

But it keeps moving.

 

NFA '34

GCA '68

Sporting purposes

AWB

922®

922(o)

[rmgill]

Love the graphic.

 

http://jovianthunderbolt.blogspot.com/2012/12/bias.html

[Archie Pellagio]

[shep854]

Love the graphic.

 

http://jovianthunder...12/12/bias.html

Even seeing the distortions, and knowing how fallacioius gun-control arguments are, that illustration still pulled at me...

[Mike Steele]

"Assault Weapon" Is Just A PR Stunt Meant To Fool The Gullible

 

 

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has announced that she will be introducing legislation to reenact the ban on so-called assault weapons that she authored in 1994. The evidence is in on the effect of her previous assault weapons ban: zero, zilch, nada, as the saying goes. The ban made no perceptible difference in the gun violence statistics when it went into effect, and no perceptible difference when it was allowed to expire 10 years later, in 2003.

That is because the term “assault weapon” is just a PR stunt that fools the gullible and easily deluded. It is defined in legislation by cosmetic features that frighten white bread suburbanites, but do not involve any functionality of any gun. We tried it, conservatives said it wouldn’t work, and it didn’t work. Yet, it is the liberal answer to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.

 

Why do the hard work of actually making a difference, when with no work at all you can perform a meaningless and irrelevant gesture that won’t make any difference? A Connecticut state law already banned assault weapons. The difference that made in stopping the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary: zero, zilch, nada, as the saying goes.

The sharpest analyst in America, and probably the whole world, on the issue of guns and crime is economist John Lott, the author of the classic book, More Guns, Less Crime. Early in his career, Lott served as an economist for the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which adopted uniform, mandatory, criminal sentencing guidelines for the federal courts. That led to his subsequent career as the world’s foremost expert on statistics relating to violent crime and guns.

Now in its Third Edition, Lott’s book is neither an opinion piece nor a lawyer’s brief. What it does is present highly sophisticated regression analysis of copious data relating to violent crime and guns city by city, county by county, and state by state, for several recent decades. Lott’s regression equations,

“account for not only all the law enforcement variables (arrest, execution, and imprisonment rates), income and poverty measures, (poverty and unemployment rates, per capita real income, as well as income maintenance, retirement and unemployment payments), the thirty-six measures of demographic changes, and the national average changes in crime rates from year-to-year and average differences across states …. In addition, the [regressions] account for the difference in various concealed handgun laws and other types of gun control laws.”

In short, this is the most sophisticated and comprehensive presentation of the data relating to violent crime and guns in the world.

This and similar work relating to other countries worldwide shows that where the local population owns more guns, there is less crime. That it is because criminals avoid victims who are or might be armed, and prefer to prey on the defenseless and unarmed, such as in “gun-free” zones. And because the presence of guns that can be used in self defense stops the commission of the more violent crimes, such as murder.

This unparalleled scholarship has swept the states with newly enacted “concealed carry” laws. These laws require local authorities to issue permits to carry concealed handguns to those who meet the specified qualifications, known as “shall issue” laws. Alternative state laws authorize local authorities with the discretion to issue such concealed carry permits, known as “may issue’ laws. In the early 1980s, just 8 states had any such right to carry laws. Today, 39 states have shall issue laws and 9 more have may issue laws. That leaves just two states, Illinois and Wisconsin, that completely ban citizens from carrying concealed handguns, and the Seventh Circuit just ruled the Illinois ban to be unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

As a result, by 2007 about 5 million Americans held permits to carry concealed handguns. Lott’ s Third Edition published in 2010 includes regressions that show these concealed carry laws result in:

“large drops in overall violent crime, murder, rape, and aggravated assault that begin right after the right to carry laws have gone into effect. In all those crime categories, the crime rates consistently stay much lower than they were before the law. The murder rate for these right to carry states fell consistently every year relative to non-right-to-carry states.”

Lott summarizes,

“All the results indicate that violent crime falls after right-to-carry laws are passed …. There is a large, statistically significant drop in murder rates across all specifications. The before-and-after average comparison implies that right-to-carry laws reduce murder by roughly 20 percent. In all cases, right-to-carry laws cause the trends in murder, rape, and robbery rates to fall.”

As David Kopel explained in the Wall Street Journal on December 17, armed permit holders often serve as the first line of defense against mass murderers:

“The media rarely mentions the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney Restaurant in Anniston, Ala (1991 ), the high school in Pearl, Miss. ( 1997), the middle school dance in Edinboro, Penn. ( 1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others. At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer’s next shot was to kill himself.”

Israel, which can’t afford the weak minded irrationality of American liberals, has learned from all this and its own experience to stop terrorist attacks in its schools by arming its teachers. That has worked spectacularly to shut down terrorist attacks in Isreali schools, without a single accident or misuse of guns.

But CNN anchor Piers Morgan showed recently that he does not learn from experience when he unprofessionally attacked Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt on the air as “an incredibly stupid man” because Pratt was aware of the above evidence, while Morgan was not. Morgan, who demonstrates on air every day why people have said that America and Britain are two nations separated by a common language, ignorantly insisted that America adopt the benighted gun control laws of his formerly great country of Britain.

George Mason Law School Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard, 2002), explained why Morgan’s position was so silly in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In March, 1996, Thomas Hamilton, known to suffer mental illness, shot and killed 16 young children and their teacher in a primary school in the Scottish town of Dumb lane, wounding 10 other children and 3 more teachers before killing himself. That resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, “which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.”

The results of that law, which would be unconstitutional in the U.S. no matter how many guests Piers Morgan calls stupid on his show, were:

“Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time.”

Lott adds, “The evidence should make gun control advocates pause, as all the gun bans that I have studied show that murder rates increase after the ban is enacted.”

The draconian British law nullifying self defense in that country did not end mass shootings there. In June 2010, “Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.”

Based on all the evidence and experience above, what would work to stop tragedies like Sandy Hook Elementary is to offer a bonus of $2,500 a year to all teachers who obtain a conceal and carry permit, which requires training in every state, and who bring their gun to school every day, where it would be available in case of emergency. That would deter even mentally ill people from even trying mass murders at schools.

Lott explains that mass murderers choose so-called gun free zones such as schools or movie theaters or shopping malls where guns are prohibited because they know they can carry out their plan for mass murder there without being stopped. All gun free zone signs should be required to include a skull and crossbones with the admonition to the innocent “Enter at your own risk.”

Lott adds that these mass murderers are consciously choosing to commit suicide in carrying out their crimes. But they don’t want to go out quietly. They want to go out with a big bang to draw national and even worldwide attention to their pain and their plight. This is all a reflection of their mental illness.

Only the above policy of arming the teachers can stop such crazed madmen. The government does not even have the power to take away guns from dangerous criminals and insane mass murderers. We can’t even stop drugs and illegal aliens from crossing the border, and drugs and illegal guns even show up in prisons. Guns will always be available to those who want to obtain them. Legally mandated helplessness by the victims and those who could protect them only results in maximum vulnerability, as at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Moreover, Kopel also reports in Monday’s Journal, “A 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates, ‘found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil commitment laws.” Wednesday’s Journal notes that a Hartford, Connecticut Judge Robert K. Killian, Jr. has been arguing for Connecticut to adopt stronger civil commitment laws, based on his own experience with repeat offenders. But the ACLU

was focused on protecting Adam Lanza’s civil liberties to mow down kindergarten students at Sandy Hook Elementary, so the Connecticut legislature never acted.

 

The same paper editorializes that a better solution would be mandatory outpatient treatment laws for the mentally ill who are a danger to others without taking their medication, which has “shown results in limiting violence among the mentally ill.”

These policies would constitute a complete and effective program to prevent the next Sandy Hook Elementary atrocity. But they are based on evidence and reason, not mindless emotion, so don’t expect any “liberal” support.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/12/28/assault-weapon-is-just-a-pr-stunt-meant-to-fool-the-gullible/

[rmgill]

The problem with the gun control argument as it is in this country is that we have facts and figures and they have penis jokes. They don't really care about that.

Edited January 2, 2013 by rmgill

[X-Files]

As I have said before: the NRA and others have decided that the death of twenty innocents outweighs the civil rights of even one gun owner.

 

People like you condemned 26 Americans to death with your feel-good nonsense and 'gun free zones'.

 

Yes, 26 innocents.

 

But hey, facts don't matter when you're emoting.

 

*

 

For people who deal in facts and actually solving problems - armed civilian confronts mall shooter and while positioning for a backstopped clear shot, causes the nutcase to commit suicide.

 

 

http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html

Edited January 2, 2013 by X-Files

[toysoldier]

For people who deal in facts and actually solving problems - armed civilian confronts mall shooter and while positioning for a backstopped clear shot, causes the nutcase to commit suicide.

http://www.kgw.com/n...-183593571.html

 

That confirms my opinion. IMHO, another person with gun automatically dis-empowers the shooter, ending his deranged power fantasy. That´s why they kill themsleves or surrender when LEOs arrive. Other people´s guns, thats a game end to them, they're no longer in charge.

[Simon Tan]

If you sign up for a gun free zone, you get to patrol it with a less-than-lethal tool of your choice.

[Ivanhoe]

If you sign up for a gun free zone, you get to patrol it with a less-than-lethal tool of your choice.

 

[Archie Pellagio]

If you sign up for a gun free zone, you get to patrol it with a less-than-lethal tool of your choice.

 

Not sure if serious...

 

[thekirk]

If you sign up for a gun free zone, you get to patrol it with a less-than-lethal tool of your choice.

 

I'd settle just for "create gun-free zone, assume responsibility/liability for providing security within it". I still don't know why the hell some of these victims haven't gone after the companies and governmental entities who've created these things, which are basically attractive nuisances for spree killers, and who haven't also provided effective security. I think the victims at the Aurora theater have a damn good case for such a lawsuit, and I'd like to see someone take a stab at establishing case law on this issue.

 

I don't mind you wanting a gun-free zone, if you believe in such things. However, if you're operating a public venue, and don't also provide security, you should have to assume liability for your decision to remove effective self-defense from your clientele. Government agencies shouldn't be allowed to even suggest such a thing, unless they're providing armed security for the site. It annoys the hell out of me that every post office in the country is essentially a gun-free zone, but there's not one damn security agent present at 99% of them.

[Simon Tan]

I am. You want it, you enable it. And no guns. That would violate the gun-free thing. I despise activists who want someone else to do the lifting for their feel good fix.

If you get shot in the course of defending the zone from gunmen, I shall send flowers. If you get killed, I shall send money to help with the funeral.

[shep854]

Newspaper that published gun-owners' addresses has hired armed security:

http://www.rocklandt...-and-dangerous/

"Guns are good for the goose but NOT for the gander.

"A Clarkstown police report issued on December 28, 2012, confirmed that The Journal News has hired armed security guards from New City-based RGA Investigations and that they are manning the newspaper’s Rockland County headquarters at 1 Crosfield Ave., West Nyack, through at least tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2, 2013."--excerpt

Edited January 3, 2013 by shep854

[Mike Steele]

FYI Doug.....

 

Australian Gun Ban Facts & Statistics

 

 

It has now been over 10 years since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

 

The statistics for the years following the ban are now in:

• Accidental gun deaths are 300% higher than the pre-1997 ban rate
  
• The assault rate has increased 800% since 1991, and increased 200% since the 1997 gun ban.
  
• Robbery and armed robbery have increase 20% from the pre-97 ban rate.
  
• From immediately after the ban was instituted in 1997 through 2002, the robbery and armed robbery rate was up 200% over the pre-ban rates.
  
• In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 171 percent.
  

 

 

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort, and expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns.

 

 

 

Let's examine the overall murder rate and the gun murder rate in Australia. Take note both are virtually unchanged and unaffected by the gun ban.

 

 

 

The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it. While the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns. Criminals in Australia now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws ONLY adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens.

 

Take note my fellow Americans, before it's too late! The next time someone talks in favor of gun control, please remind them of this history lesson. With guns, we are 'citizens'. Without them, we are 'subjects'.

 

One final statistic...

 

Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 170 million

"The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental."

- John Steinbeck

[Archie Pellagio]

Where did that guy get those statistics from?

Those numbers seem extremely fishy to me, and his blog doesn't cite sources.

 

Those numbers fly in the face of every other study I've seen, I'm incredibly sceptical at the moment...

[thekirk]

Where did that guy get those statistics from?

Those numbers seem extremely fishy to me, and his blog doesn't cite sources.

 

Those numbers fly in the face of every other study I've seen, I'm incredibly sceptical at the moment...

 

I'd be wary of any statistics on the issue, frankly. Especially the "official" ones--Because I've been hearing for years about dodgy numbers being reported a la New York City's fudged crime statistics from Australian sources. There's a study and/or research paper I've seen that does a pretty good job of "proving" that the stats coming out of some of the Australian police agencies are fudging things, and have been doing so since the 1990s. Supposedly, the author(s) of the paper found a "back door" into some municipalities officially released stats (I seem to remember them having been released on a spreadsheet with the real, pre-fudge numbers either having been "hidden", or in a back revision), and the numbers were significantly different.

 

Whether or not that stuff is true? No idea, whatsoever. I came across that information while I was looking up some stuff about Benjamin Bratton and New York City's CompStat program--Which is an interesting example of statistical manipulation creeping into things after awhile, just by itself. I really don't trust New York City's numbers these days, either.

 

No matter whose statistics you use, they're useless unless you know the background of where they came from, and how they were derived. The cited stats could well be ones created from initial police reports, and the lower numbers you're thinking are more correct could be from actual crimes charged, prosecuted, and found guilty. As they say, numbers don't lie, but liars figure.

[DKTanker]

Where did that guy get those statistics from?

Those numbers seem extremely fishy to me, and his blog doesn't cite sources.

 

Those numbers fly in the face of every other study I've seen, I'm incredibly sceptical at the moment...

He didn't source his data, you didn't source your anecdote. Of whom should we be more sceptical?