“It’s unfortunate that we have to think about those things, if one of our guns had some effect on a person’s life. Is (a crime committed with a gun you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility? It’s a difficult conversation.” – Tampa Arms Company owner Thom Hauser in Coming to a City Near You: Stolen Guns [via citylab.com]
more important are the lives these tools save.
Let’s play a game. (You know this game already.) Change the inanimate object, and see how same statement sounds:
Is (a crime committed with a knife you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
Is (a crime committed with a rope and roll of duct tape you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
Is (a crime committed with a car you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
Is (a crime committed with abottle of alcohol you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
Is (a crime committed with a bottle of chemical you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
Is (a crime committed with a load of manure you sell) your fault? Well, not really. We have no control over that. At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?
love it.
especially the criminal use of manure.
Fertilizer bombs
But none of those are magic talismans like g uns.
In some States if a Bar continues to sell booze to someone obviously impaired (drunk), the Bar and owner is liable should that person injure or kill some driving home.
A comparative example would be a gun shop owner who keeps selling guns to a guy who’s always robbing banks. Yeah, at some point if you know the guy is robbing banks, maybe you should stop selling him guns.
To say nothing of telling the police.
Or a guy who sells guns to people he knows will commit crimes with them. But few, if any, legitimate dealers do that.
But that would apply to the other tools as well: if you give your buddy a roll of duct tape, knowing he’s going to use it to kidnap somebody, you’re an accomplice.
But a bar patron doesn’t have to go through a NICS check to see if he’s (or, she’s) not a prohibited person, therefore relieving the bartender of any legal responsibility.
I”n some States if a Bar continues to sell booze to someone obviously impaired (drunk), the Bar and owner is liable should that person injure or kill some driving home.”
Geoff that is not a valid analogy.. I worked in the liquor business, my dad had a bar and my uncle had a package store.
10 You are impaired after one drink. How does anyone in the Us, or anywhere ever have two drinks at a bar? Nevermind three or a pair of doubles? or two bottles of wine for three people at a restaurant? Have you asked yourself that?
The server has to have evidence you drive and that you have your vehicle with you, otherwise the waiter, waitress, establishment is not responsible.
The proper analogy would be INDEFICATION laws. Do you think gun stores sell firearms with no identification?
The big difference between a firearm and the objects you mention are federal law prohibits felons from owning and purchasing a firearm. It does behoove you to know who you’re selling to.
Unless the seller knows that the buyer is a prohibited person, then the onus (and liability) is squarely on the buyer.
True, but that’s paper law. Trial law and post-incident realities are quite different.
First thing everyone, including authorities, wants to know is where the gun came from. There’s an entire tracing aparatus set up to answer those questions.
[Pause here to interject with the obligatory, emotional defiance “But that activity doesn’t solve or prevent any crimes!!!”
Done? Ok, now let’s return to material that is actually relevant to the discussion.]
In the real world, anyone can file a civil lawsuit for as little as about $300, regardless of their chances of prevailing. If they have some anti-gun group, or lawyer trying to make a name for himself to foot the bills, then you’ll need a lawyer to defend yourself.
Whether the seller knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that the buyer was a prohibited possessor is a matter of fact to be determined in court. Guess what? That’s another lawyer you’ll need! This time, a criminal defense lawyer.
It’s also illegal to sell a gun to someone whom you, what? You guessed it: knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that the buyer intended to use it to commit a crime. That’s another fact, and a slippery one, at that, to be found by a court. There goes your life savings, even if you’re exonerated. There goes your freedom, if you get a blubbering, easily persuaded jury.
Federal law requires licensed firearm dealers to alert authorities of repeat gun purchases when a buyer purchases two handguns from the same dealer within five days. If you’re a decent sized store, you’re apt to have several different personnel run the counter. I hope they all communicate perfectly or that you’ve wisely invested in an industry-specific POS system that can flag such transactions. Otherwise, that’s on you if the buyer ends up doing something that brings the ATF and FBI to your door.
Speaking of which, when they do arrive, expect them to shut down your business at least fir days while they scour tge place for evidence. On top of it all, there is the social stigma and personal anguish that can result from having sold a gun used in an infamous crime.
All of these and more are legitimate concerns and risks of the business. You can’t just wipe them away with a casual “well, the onus is on them.” The real world doesn’t operate as easily as that.
“You guessed it: knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that the buyer intended to use it to commit a crime.”
Err, please don’t pretend to know the law when you don’t. There is plenty of case law on this.
and what the heck is “reasonable cause”? some kind of completely made up mix of reasonable suspicion and probable cause (two different things)?
“It does behoove you to know who you’re selling to.”
I disagree. Guns are bought and sold daily on Gunbroker, Armslist, etc. where the buyer never meets the seller. In those cases the reliance is on the NICS check conducted by the FFL on the transferee’s end.
NICS checks will not stop a sale to someone with criminal intent but no criminal history. They won’t stop a sale to a straw buyer. The NICS check is little more than a way to pacify our own conscience.
And private sales. Which is one way that scheme is foisted on the public.
This is one instance where the right can cry “victim blaming”. You sell a gun to a convicted felon, or someone commits a crime with your gun, unless you had prior knowledge you aren’t guilty of anything.
At least in my state, I can’t check to see if the person I sell my used car to has been convicted 20 times of DUI, nor can I check to see if a used car I want to buy is stolen through the state UNTIL I purchase it. While comparing cars to guns is often a bad idea, in terms of the way the laws work differently when they shouldn’t, sometimes it’s apt. Neither of those instances are different than privately selling a gun to a person you don’t know is a felon (and paperwork means nothing, CPL, bill of sale, whatever), or to someone that then uses it to commit a crime even if they weren’t a felon before.
Unarguably, not selling a car to someone convicted of DUI, and/or without insurance by providing the tools to check that first, would make society safer than mandatory background checks on firearms sales. The data is all out there, but apparently vehicle records are sacrosanct, where our 2A rights are not.
Better hope there is no email where the buyer jokingly asked whether this caliber is good for hunting an ex. The law forbids you from selling to someone whom you knew or had reasonable cause to believe would use the gun in a crime.
Those little jokes, even if only actual jokes at the time, could look a lot different to a prosecutor or plaintiff’s attorney down the road, if the buyet later murders his or her ex.
Really, anyone looking to federal law and its supposed bright lines to spare them from litigation or prosecution is whistling past the graveyard.
@ Jonathan – Houston “The law forbids you from selling to someone whom you knew or had reasonable cause to believe would use the gun in a crime.”
I am familiar with the law makes it illegal to sell to a person you have reason to believe is a prohibited person, but not one saying it is illegal to sell to a person you have reason to believe is going to commit a crime. Could you please point that law out to me? I would appreciate it.
Curtis, I don’t know what Jonathan is talking about. He is going with strawman and red herring arguments.
it is illegal to convey, sell, lend a hammer to someone who says they are going to harm someone with it.
Under the common law, it is not illegal to sell an item to someone the seller knows is going to use it for an illegal purpose. I have not examined the laws of all 50 states, but am willing to assume that it is still legal in most places.
But be aware of the cause of action known as negligent entrustment. It’s almost always about cars, though. (As best I can tell, it only applies to vehicles in Texas, but I’m not a personal injury lawyer). “A plaintiff who invokes that doctrine must present evidence which creates a factual issue whether the owner knew, or had reasonable cause to know, that he was entrusting his car to an unfit driver likely to cause injury to others. Furthermore, in order to impose liability upon the owner, the plaintiff must prove that the negligent entrustment of the motor vehicle to the tortfeasor was a proximate cause of the accident.” Turner v. Lotts, 244 Va. 554, 557 (Va. 1992) (internal citations omitted) (source taken from the great wiki).
It’s injustice for the State to hold individuals to standards they don’t adhere to themselves. The government distributes weapons to various groups all the time and those weapons are inevitably used against Americans. If good intentions or no ill intent are a good enough defense for the U.S. government then they should be good enough for its citizens.
To Chips in the head Bennett
According to Bennett any solution that involves any inconvenience to him, no matter how high the body count is, this is contrary to his bizarre belief in total freedom in society no matter how much human death and suffering it causes and therefore its un-Constitutional and that includes owning Nuclear bombs as well.
This article is similar to what we argued about in regards to private individuals being required to be responsible gun owners. Bennett has an absolute horror of responsibility when it comes to deadly weapons even as when the article stated It resulted in the death of an innocent women from a stolen gun. To Bennett he will say who gives a “fk” it was not me or my family.
FLAME DELETED it is your responsibility and the Gun store should have its ass sued off. Unfortunately that is not the way it should be as if we had laws that required gun stores to have better security a large amount of burglaries could be prevented.
Now FLAME DELETED here is just one idea that it took myself less than a couple of minutes to come up with. Now I am not advocating my idea is the ultimate as people who are in the security business I am sure will have many other great security plans as well but I put forth my idea just as proof that. yes, you can improve security and when it comes to businesses they are in business to make money and any amount of money spent on security will only be done if the greed mongers are forced to do it literally at bayonet point. I am not being facetious.
In the past there have been gun stores with walk in vaults and yes, even those that had a lot of guns in the store not just the old fashioned mom and pop stores of long ago that had less than say 25 guns or so. Others used more than one Diebold safe. Well how did they do it? Not the best solution but they did indeed physically pick them up and put them in the vault or safe and no they did not damage them either or did it take all that much time either. When you are at work you are required to work not stand around with a cup of coffee in your hand.
Now to my variation. When looking at the size of these vaults they could indeed have simply put the glass cases on industrial caster wheels and ditto for the racks of long guns as well. Then at the end of the day they were simply wheeled into the vault. And to prove my point 35 plus years ago I actually built such a system so do not tell me its too expensive or impractical or that it will not work as intended because it did. Now large volume stores have plenty of money to do something like this and small volume stores could simply pick them up and move them because I have seen them do this in the past and it did not take all that much time either. The point being this is all nothing new and the bull shit that was given by gun stores in the article was just that, bull shit. because they did not want to spend any money or time they were not required to do by law.
Other Nations have done this long ago, as security in gun stores is nothing new internationally and it is not rocket science either. If you want to be in the gun business you have to take on the responsibility that your wares do not end up in the criminals hands to cause mass death and destruction and its simply part of the cost of doing business and its not an ongoing cost but a one time cost of simply purchasing or building the walk in safe and rolling cabinets or buying a few safes.
I have seen walk in safes in private homes made of nothing more than cement block filled with strips of round re-bar and cement and believe me there is no criminal that is just going to break through that in any short period of time which gives the cops plenty of time to swoop down on the place. Even today steel is not that expensive either and hiring a good welder all manner of walk in safes can be constructed and no it does not break the bank because I have seen private individuals have a combination of several Diebold safes as well as a walk in vault and if they can do it so can much richer gun stores as I have seen over the years friends that had more guns than gun stores do.
So in conclusion rather than just saying I am as a business man too damn cheap to spend a few pennies and be a responsible gun store or I am too damn lazy to construct even a simply walk in safe and rolling cabinets, this should be enough for the government to say, fine, sell lottery tickets instead, your license is suspended you FLAME DELETED because we don’t want and will not put up with people like you in the gun business as you are the problem we do not need.
Simply throwing up your hands and saying there is no solution so let the dead bodies fall where they may is not THE AMERICAN WAY OF DOING THINGS. REAL AMERICANS GET THINGS DONE BECAUSE WE ARE NOT TOO DAMN STUPID, CHEAP, OR LAZY TO WORK A LITTLE AND SOLVE THE PROBLEM, THE DIFFICULT WE DO IMMEDIATELY AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TAKES ONLY A FEW MINUTES LONGER. ITS CALLED BEING AN A RESPONSIBLE AMERICAN AND IN THE PAST IT WAS DONE AS COMMON PRACTICE.
What is the difference between a store, and me having a gun stolen off the night stand?
Are you saying that if my gun is stolen from my house and then is used to kill or injure someone, I bear responsibility for that?
I fail to see where quantity or “deadliness” of an implement has any bearing on the issue at hand. Blame for a criminal using something gained unlawfully (lying about criminal history, theft, etc) to harm someone, is indeed solely on the criminal.
Is it stupid to leave your car or house unlocked all the time? Sure. Should it be unlawful? Absolutely not.
” if we had laws that required gun stores to have better security a large amount of burglaries could be prevented.”
Ah, yes. I only there was a law! We just don’t have enough laws! If we had more laws, criminals would stop being criminals and everyone would love each other in the land of rainbows and unicorns.
Friend, you have been drinking the liberal Kool-aid way too long.
cisco kid,
Your assertion that a secure/hardened room (for storing firearms at night) is inexpensive is laughable. Consider a store that needs 2,000 square feet to display and sell firearms in your suggested “rolling display cases”. The secure/hardened room for nighttime storage of those cases will have to be almost as large as the store’s customer space … which will nearly DOUBLE the monthly rent that such a store has to pay for their space. With rent on a 2,000 square foot commercial space easily costing $3,000 per month (depending on location of course), that adds about $3,000 per month of additional expense for the business. If the business clears about $30 per firearm sale, that business would then have to sell an additional 100 firearms per month just to cover the rent on the expanded space.
And this doesn’t even look at the actual up-front cost to build such a secure/hardened room. You mentioned solid concrete walls with re-rod which implies solid concrete floors as well … and some sort of concrete or steel roof. I can picture such a 2,000 square foot room costing in excess of $40,000 to build … which translates into the business having to sell about 1,300 firearms to cover that cost. Finally, your allegedly “simple and cheap” solution fails to account for the fact that many existing businesses DO NOT EVEN HAVE SUCH SPACE AVAILABLE EVEN IF IT COST NOTHING TO BUILD YOUR CHERISHED SECURE/HARDENED ROOM. So, would your solution thus force those businesses to relocate to a larger space?
to uncommon sense.
I do not know were you live but in my end of the planet even large gun stores have most of their space devoted not to guns but camping equipment, knives, clothing etc. The guns are usually located in a corner of the store and yes even the large ones could easily construct and use such a room. Guns spread out in the corner may seem like they take up more space than they do but when the display is split every few feet you can roll them side by side in a fairly small room as no isles are needed etc. As I said before we did it so no one can bullshit me that it does not work even with large stores.
Even constructing a larger room of concrete with cement and re-bar or structural steel enforced walls is a hell of a lot better than nothing and using rare sensational examples of the use of a back hoe knocking down a gun store wall is still misleading as when you jam guns in a much smaller corner of the building where the guns are , even if you just build the wall around the guns would mean you would no 1. have to first knock a big hole in the store wall to get the back hoe in and then go down through the store and when you did knock down the gun room wall the smaller space would end up falling down on top of the stored guns. This would do 3 things. No.1 all this demolition takes way more time, especially knocking down a re-bar reinforced wall or one with structural steel and then no.2 the debris would cover the guns destroying some of them (which is good as far as them being able to be used in a crime of death and destruction and 3. the crooks would have to fish through all the debris to even extricate the guns thereby wasting even more valuable time. Result, the cops have more than enough time to get there 3 times as fast and before you start yelling I am a cheap skate and my guns were damaged think about how much more money it will cost you in a multimillion dollar law suit because your guns killed not one person but were used in multiple crimes that may go on for years and put you back in court again and again.
As an added bonus the crooks all know each other and when they fail in an attempt to steal guns and especially when their buddies all get caught the idea that its an easy job to knock over a gun store just does not interest them anymore.
In short nothing is always fool proof but only a cheap, skate and an absolute fool would do nothing to prevent theft, even if he cared nothing about human life and only profit because its the profit motive that makes him realize the law suits, not the theft, is what is going to bankrupt him and also cause him to lose his license.
Now lets look at another angle no one discussed. Sensational crimes committed because of gun store robberies makes the ATF just look for an excuse to take your license and if you have ever followed some of these stories they come down hard on the gun store so once again not doing something to show that you were a responsible businessman only makes public out rage put all the more pressure on the ATF to punish the gun store and take their license away. In one case they actually used the excuse (when they had no reason) was to take the license because they said the gun store owner did not file in a timely manner to renew his license which was not true at all but remember when you appeal you have to go before a Kangaroo court that is staffed by guess who, the government who is never going to rule in your favor.
To date in a reign of terror the ATF conducted because they did not have enough staff to police all the gun stores they simply shut half of them down. One even lost his license because he used paper clips on his documents instead of staples. I think now anyone can get the picture loud and clear when it comes to losing your license there is no law, the government makes it up as they go along and by the way when all this reign of terror was going on there was never a peep out of the NRA.
to uncommon sense.
Quote————Your assertion that a secure/hardened room (for storing firearms at night) is inexpensive is laughable.————Quote——–
No you are laughable. One could build a simple steel cage around the existing guns. I do not know where you live but in our big gun stores most of the space is devoted to clothing, camping gear, tree stands etc. etc. The guns are in a corner of the room and if cheap concrete blocks filled with cement re-forced with rebar are not used a simple steel cage can be built around the guns so now you are not adding space to the building at all. And being a cheap ass as you are screaming about the cost per month for the safe room it is a one time expense to build. If you do not have the money to build a separate safe room or even a barrier cage then you should not be in the business to begin with because you have a responsibility to the public if you enter the gun business to keep the public from being gunned down by your guns that you had for sale when you could have prevented it. Now that is real common sense.
Sensational stories about back hoes make good press but even using such a machine would require that you first break down the outer building wall, then bring the back hoe through the store and knock down or attempt to knock down the structural steel cage or concrete wall which would take additional time as well. Remember more time more likely they get caught. When a concrete wall would collapse over the existing guns it would cover them forcing the crooks to dig through the debris to retrieve them and many would be no longer operable as well. All this again takes even more time and again giving the police now 3 times as fast an opportunity to get there and arrest them.
Now you will scream, my guns were damaged and destroyed. Yes and a good thing because they do not end up killing innocent people who will in turn sue you over years as stolen guns end up in multiple crimes spanning years which will come back to haunt you and sue you again and again so losing the guns is the cheap way out. It also sends a message to the crooks because they all know each other and when a heist fails and their buddies also get caught the idea of breaking into a gun store after hours has less and less of an appeal.
Civilized Nations have dealt with this problem long ago both in terms of private people storing deadly weapons and stores that sell them. Its about time the U.S. is forced to act like a civilized nation and take on some civic responsibility to keep guns from falling into the hands of criminals and nut cases that cause mass killings.
You may be a greed monger that looks at profit above peoples lives (Conservatives always do that and it is the real reason they say global warming does not exist) but when it may happen to your loved ones the dim light bulb goes on when you realize that yes I could have prevented this from happening or made it 99 per cent less likely to happen in an after hours robbery.
You can always count on the business man to destroy life over profit even it means destroying the entire world because we could have saved the entire planet but chose mad dog greed monger profit over stopping global warming or gun theft, as its always about money over human life, its the hallmark of conservatism and good business practice.
As I said before safe storage is not only for guns stores its for private owners as well and again every civilized Nation in the world has safe storage laws both in terms of preventing children from being killed and theft.
@cisco, so first you say it only about stores, and now you open it to forcing storage laws at home. and children.
Look, you clearly don’t know the subject. tWe know why safe storage laws don’t change child death and injury one iota. We know it form state data, and the NJ data shows north of 95% of shootings of children are with guns owned by criminals who are nota afected at all by “safe storage ;laws”
\In fact virtually all the killings of children, be they with knifes, strangling, guns, beatings are done by felons or multiple arrest criminals domiciled in the home. Just as most access to firearms results from criminals, usually the man the mother is dating, domiciled.
So given we know that the real risk is allowing criminals in homes of children, why are you not suggesting safe storage of criminals — ie out of homes with children?
You are either ignorant of the data or simply don’t care
To Cal
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
In 2016 there were 24,984 children shot with guns both maimed (often for life) and killed. I think this shows how asinine your reply was.
For the record that gunviolcne archive nubmer has been debunked.
First its “child” cohort goes up through 22 years old. In fact almost all of the gunshot injury and death in that number is 16-22 yer old gang members.
It also includes slide bites, powered burns and temporary hearing loss. The majority of actual death and gunshot injury of children, over 90% occur in homes of criminals, where knifing injury and death, beating injury and death are just as elevated
(N.B. you are a walking ad hominem. The mods here must really like you… )
The voices inside your head do not speak for me. You have (yet again, as is your MO) attributed to me words and ideas that you have made up out of whole cloth.
The onus for harm is on the one causing the harm. The onus for lawbreaking is on the one who has broken the law. With respect to a criminal a) breaking into someone else’s property, b) stealing a firearm, and c) using that stolen firearm to harm another, it is the criminal who is responsible for all three.
(More ad hominem. Yawn.)
Then again, as pointed out in the article, nearly all security measures can be defeated by a truly motivated criminal. For example: Thieves can break into a store through a wall from an adjoining business; Knight says that one store with good security was nevertheless burglarized when thieves broke in through the roof.
Any security that can be conceived, can also be defeated. Due diligence (much less, criminally liable negligence) is not defined by the ability of a criminal to defeat security measures that have been implemented.
I have no idea what you are implying here, other than a trite and very poorly worded ad hominem. That well has run dry by now, don’t you think?
Yep, that’s a decent, workable idea. But, as we’ve already covered, gun store owners are already doing due diligence, and more, and are still being broken into.
Except, no. Because, a) the gun stores in the article (save for one example) were actually already implementing security measures, and b) it is still a very minor problem. 7,500 guns are stolen from gun stores in a given year, but over 230,000 guns are stolen from other, private sources in that same given year. Fix every gun store to prevent any gun theft, and you have put a 3% dent in the overall number of annual gun thefts.
Want to solve the problem? Get, and keep, the violent felons off of the streets. Putting burdens, restrictions, and infringements upon the exercise of rights of the law-abiding will not solve the problem – especially when the law-abiding are already doing due diligence to deter the violent felons.
to chips in the head bennett
quote—————————230,000 guns are stolen from other, private sources in that same given year. Fix every gun store to prevent any gun theft, and you have put a 3% dent in the overall number of annual gun thefts.——————-
Yep, there you go again proving my point quoting 3 per cent, lets say your bull shit is correct, what you are really saying is “I could not car less about the numbers of people that those 3 per cent represent that are in the grave”. Remember my saying today you could not care less about the body count. You just proved me correct as to my prior statement and it came right out of your mouth because the above quote is right from your post. Now genius lets see you give some flowery speech about “not to worry about all the dead bodies the count is not high enough”. Your a sick man.
Well you fell right into your own shit house on that one. That is exactly the big fight we got into not to long ago when you were yelling it was your twisted demented right to let loaded guns lying around the house no matter how many children got shot or no matter how many of them got stolen. The usual nut case excuses, to expensive, I do not feel like it, my kids are perfect and could never make a mistake, I sit at the right hand of God and I could never make a mistake or have an accident or kids coming over to play would never pick one up and accidentally shoot themselves because I live a charmed life, blah, blah etc. etc.
All this is was my point right from the beginning i.e. Responsible gun ownership of private individuals and we expect no less from gun dealers. If they do not have the money to put them at night in a safe, or walk in safe or in a cage then they do not have the right to sell them to begin with. As one other poster said today, his shop in his town was so irresponsible that they did not even bother to put bars on the windows. Come on, that shop should have been shut down immediately. That’s how they do it in civilized nations and none of your flowery bull shit about them already doing it is truthful as the vidoe’s on nightly news prove many of them do not because to them profit comes before human life. Now you cannot lie your way out of this one or pontificate about the demented right to let the body count pill up because of some bizarre belief in the ultimate right of being free to act without regard to the public safety.
Amongst sane people this would not even have been open to discussion. No other European industrialized country puts up with such insanity and ditto for Japan as well. And yes people do own both rifles and shotguns in Japan. Recently an American who moved there gave a detailed report on their gun laws and how he acquired both a rifle and a shotgun and the requirements for security of the guns in his home. The excess bear population is regularly gunned down with the shotgun and no its not just by government hunters which again was featured in the special.
Yes when the anti-gunners start yelling they want to ban guns, can you really blame them when we have a bunch of irresponsible hill jacks in combination with a bunch of right wing nut cases that believe when it comes to guns there should not be any laws at all, no Brady Bill, no secure storage of guns with private individuals or with gun stores, no vetting of private sales, no security alarm systems etc. A lunatic in a nut house could not have come up with a more insane system that we have here today in the U.S.
When some gun stores as long as 30 and 40 years ago had walk in safes, standing safes and or cages, bars on windows and burglar alarms with todays increased crime not having any of these things is absolutely obscene.
In our town the ATF let it be known that they would find a way to shut gun dealers down when they caught them without trigger locks on their guns in the local stores and without any laws being passed the gun dealers knew that the usual new “defacto law” was now in effect and overnight every dam gun in several stores had trigger locks on them to prevent people from being shot. That is why the ATF made the off the cuff announcement to begin with. They do not uphold the law, they are the law and if you complain you have to go before their board which always has been a kangaroo court. So as you can see the ATF at any time can make gun dealers do what it wants them to do without passing any law as by the time they fight them in court over it years will pass and they will be out of business anyway and they know it. In a case like that I could well be on the ATF’s side when they make the irresponsible gun shops act responsibly by requiring safes, security alrams, bars on windows etc. Its long overdue.
Dear TTAG mods: at some point, do you ever plan to hold the cisco kid to TTAG comment policies?
@ cisco. Do you relaixe how badly you are flaiming?
You earlier mention numbers that are suicide+homocide with guns and now you mention Japan. JAPAN has a much HIGHER rate of suicide+homicide than the US does.
And the US has a LOWER rate of murder of non criminals than Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, and half of Europe.
why do you think homes with firearms and no criminals domiciled are about 25% safer than homes with no guns? The gun control lobby for decades claimed homes with firearm were more dangerous to household members. But in fact, when you control for criminals domiciled in homes, homes with guns an no criminals are SAFER homes with no guns!
But I do thank you, thanks to the specious arguments by gun control advocates more and more people understand guns make a home SAFER:
https://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2014-11-10-at-Monday-November-10-1.11-PM-2.png
cisco kid,
In case your head isn’t spinning yet, it will be after you learn the following. Defeating that secure/hardened room is exceedingly simple: all a determined criminal has to do is follow the store owner/manager home and ambush him/her, which is quite simple to do if you are honest. Once the criminal has gained control of the store owner/manager, the criminal simply instructs the owner/manager to come to the store and open it. Facing a choice between almost certain death and opening the secure/hardened room, the owner/manager is going to open the door every time.
Let’s be honest: the only way to truly secure something is to have a secure/hardened installation that includes multiple physical security layers and multiple armed security personnel onsite 24/7. That isn’t feasible with local gun stores.
uncommon sense
Come on quit changing the subject we were talking about one aspect of guns being stolen not every type of robbery imaginable. We were talking about after hours not hours of business. Besides uncommon sense, common sense, would tell you most gun stores are not robbed when the owners are there because even stupid crooks know there is a great chance they are going head on into a deadly shoot out. Many, many ,gun stores have armed employees openly carrying and the crooks are not blind when they case a store. And considering the fact that there will be armed customers there also and every one has a cell phone to call police even the dumb crook seldom is stupid enough to get into that situation. So quite trying to change the original subject and give examples of robberies that are really quite rare and HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH STORAGE AFTER HOURS.
cisco kid,
I WAS explicitly referring to robberies after hours. No matter how fantastic an after-hours walk-in vault may be, bypassing the after-hours vault is as easy as coercing the owner/manager AFTER HOURS to hand over the keys/combination. And coercing the owner/manager is as easy as holding their child/spouse at knife/gun point.
As for your suggestion that such a robbery is or would be rare, where is your evidence of that? As is stands right now, thieves are bringing trucks and heavy chains to gun stores and ripping off the entire doorway and/or wall as necessary to breach the building. Surveilling the owner/manager and setting up an ambush AFTER HOURS requires no more dedication/ingenuity than acquiring a truck, heavy chains, and a way to anchor those chains to a door/wall.
There was a LGS in the jurisdiction where I worked which was hit several times by use of the “smash and grab” with a (usually) stolen vehicle. After each break-in the owner “hardened the target” with more steel and concrete until the place was a veritable fortress impervious to any vehicle short of a tank. That’s when the criminals switched tactics to hostage taking. After the second time it happened, the owner closed up for good, saying the business wasn’t worth the danger to his family.
@ Cisco, at every turn when confronted with facts you ignore the facts presented and pivot to a new absurdity
” Well how did they do it? Not the best solution but they did indeed physically pick them up and put them in the vault or safe and no they did not damage them either or did it take all that much time either.”
Right *there* is the proof your head is firmly ensconced in your own ass.
You know *nothing* of what you speak. Handling them dings them up. Full stop.
Just where do the idiots like ‘cisco’ come from, anyways?
cisco is on about safe storage now. He’s also commented about we shouldn’t carry guns outside our homes cause we might get shot by cops like Castile.
He’s very much an anti gun troll.
Admit it cisco. The only way to prevent bad things from happening with firearms, is to completely remove them from the planet.
You know that is reality, why do you stop short with saying more nonsensical laws are needed?
Bad people exist, they will always exist, and guns are a convenient way to commit crime. Until guns are no longer available, at all, in any capacity, there will ALWAYS be crime committed with firearms, because there will always be bad people. Don’t be so dishonest in your dealings with gun owners.
And when the guns are gone, we’ll go back to slaughtering people with swords, or arrows, or rocks, or clubs, whatever is the next weapon of choice. You can not legislate away evil.
@ Cisco, except the data show you are wrong. You are flaming everyone and making these complete illogical and unsupported statements.
do you even realize how tiny the portion of guns used to commit murder come from gun store thefts?
to cal
http://wjla.com/news/local/atf-reports-increase-in-gun-store-robberies-nationwide-including-va-md
According to the ATF, in 2012, there were 377 burglaries of licensed gun stores nationwide. In 2016, that figure rose to 558 – a 48 percent increase. In 2012, there were 12 robberies of licensed gun stores nationwide. In 2016, that figure rose to 33 – a staggering 175 percent increase.
All combined, 7,858 firearms were stolen from licensed gun dealers in 2016, 76 percent more than in 2012. The ATF highlights that many of the weapons were sold for top dollar on the black market in cities across America, in turn, contributing to increased crime and violence.
THERE WERE 762 MURDERS IN CHICAGO IN 2016 AND ACCORDING TO THE ATF EVERY ONE WAS COMMITTED WITH A STOLEN HANDGUN. AND CHIPS IN THE HEAD ADMITS THERE WERE 7,500 GUNS STOLEN FROM GUN STORES. NOW YOU CAN SEE HOW ASSINE CHIPS IN THE HEADS BLABBERING IS ON HIS CLAIM OF THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF MULTITUDES OF DEAD BODIES PILING UP. ITS RIGHT FROM HIS OWN FIGURES .
“THERE WERE 762 MURDERS IN CHICAGO IN 2016 AND ACCORDING TO THE ATF EVERY ONE WAS COMMITTED WITH A STOLEN HANDGUN.”
So with that fact, you agree that gun control doesn’t work, at all?
To DY
Your reading comprehension is about zero. What do you think I have been screaming about ad infinitum
1. No vetting of second hand guns means they are sold in every state regardless of the State Laws
2. No mandatory laws requiring people to have safes
3. No mandatory laws requiring people to have security alarms
4. Ditto for both of the above when it comes to Gun Stores.
OF COURSE THE LAWS DO NOT WORK BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE THESE LAWS.
Laws like the Brady Law did and do work but only for NEW GUN SALES, NOT SECOND HAND GUN SALES AS THEY ARE NOT REQUIRED OF INDIVIDUALS IN MANY STATES. AGAIN HOW DO YOU EXPECT THE CURRENT LAWS TO WORK WHEN THEY ARE CASTRATED AND MADE MEANINGLESS BY THE LACK OF THE ABOVE LISTED LAWS. THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. WITHOUT FEDERAL LAW, STATE LAWS ARE MEANINGLESS.
I very easily comprehended what you wrote. Because gun laws don’t work, people are killed. That’s not tough to understand.
You are very clearly a victim-blamer. Do you also tell rape victims they deserved it because of how they dressed or where they were.
People like you (that is, people who come on websites dedicated to freedom and advocate taking our freedom away), that want to dictate behavior, disgust me. With no sense of personal responsibility or intelligence, want to tell everyone else how to run their life. Well, guess what? People like you got Trump elected, because they do not believe your laws and nanny state are what this country is about. Are you happy with your results? If you are, keep it up, because the results will be the same election after election. Your “arguments” serve to reinforce the behavior of everyone that voted against the anti-freedom crowd.
To DY
Quote——————————-I very easily comprehended what you wrote. Because gun laws don’t work, people are killed. That’s not tough to understand.——————–Quote
Your response proves you comprehend absolutely nothing about what I wrote. Zelch, Zero, Nada.
quote——————-You are very clearly a victim-blamer. Do you also tell rape victims they deserved it because of how they dressed or where they were. —————————————quote
The victims were where speaking of were people gunned down with guns stolen from gun stores. Go back and comprehend what I wrote. I was blaming gun store owners not the victims that got shot. And by the way I did not blame rape victims as I did not even mention them. Are you hitting the “six pack” again. Get sober before you start a nonsensical rant.
Quote——————-People like you (that is, people who come on websites dedicated to freedom and advocate taking our freedom away), that want to dictate behavior, disgust me. With no sense of personal responsibility or intelligence, want to tell everyone else how to run their life. Well, guess what? People like you got Trump elected, because they do not believe your laws and nanny state are what this country is about. Are you happy with your results? If you are, keep it up, because the results will be the same election after election. Your “arguments” serve to reinforce the behavior of everyone that voted against the anti-freedom crowd.————————–Quote
I never voted for Trump and never stated I ever did vote for him. And your rant about responsibility is precisely what I have been stating i.e. that gun shop owners need to take responsibility for the storage of deadly weapons so they do not end up stolen and in the hands of criminals. Again your reading comprehension is at absolute zero.
Again. Everyone here understands you and your type. You hate freedom. You don’t understand that you hate freedom, but that is ok. You are willing to trade perceived safety for freedom. We know.
To DY
Quote—————————–Again. Everyone here understands you and your type. You hate freedom. You don’t understand that you hate freedom, but that is ok. You are willing to trade perceived safety for freedom. We know.————————Quote
Freedom in the U.S. is not unlimited, it never has been. You are not free to drive your car 100 mph through a school zone and kill children. You are not free to yell “fire” in a theater which would result in deaths of innocent people. And Gun Shop Owners should not have the freedom to act irresponsible and allow any street punk that wants to get guns to just walk in in the middle of the night and fill his sack with pistols which results in innocent people being killed.
NOW WHAT PART OF THIS DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
If we are talking about assigning culpability, I have wondered why the thousands in welfare checks and free schooling the U.S. government gave the Tsarnaev family doesn’t make the Boston Bombing U.S. government state sponsored terrorism. The two brothers never had a real job in their lives, so unless they got the money from oversees, the U.S. government funded the plane trip to Dagestan for terrorist training and the materials for their pressure cooker bombs.
Why aren’t the states culpable for traffic fatalities? They are responsible for testing our ability to drive and periodically providing proof we are capable of doing so safely, so isn’t it their fault when we kill someone with a car? If you have a state-issued CPL, isn’t the state responsible by allowing you to have it if you do something bad while carrying concealed?
Good questions. I would still argue that payments impart more culpability than issuing a license. Paying an assassin vs certifying he is a good shot for example. One activity is illegal in a court of law.
The original article is about stolen guns not selling guns. This was added to the original story. The owner was commenting on stolen firearms. Even this new outlet is not reporting news properly pretty bad.
There’s no conversation. What you do is on you and nobody else.
The only caveat would be if you’re an impressionable retard and some G-man guides your hand into some action so he can say “look, I did something!”
When “we” elect a progtard marxist as president (a tool) am I/we responsible for his evil and incompetence? Though I voted against him? Twice. Only under the “didn’t do everything humanly possible to stop him” theory.
Q: How does a gun-seller know if he’s responsible for a crime committed with a gun he sold?
Simple: Did you sell the gun without a passed background check?
Did you pull the trigger?
If the answer to these is ‘No’ then you have committed no crime. Go on about your life. Have a nice day.
“Did you sell the gun without a passed background check?”
If an FFL sells a gun without properly conducting an NICS check, he has broken federal (and possibly state) laws and could lose his license. But it still doesn’t make him responsible for someone else’s criminal behavior.
Is it clear to a reasonable person that the buyer is under the influence of alcohol or drugs (even legal drugs)?
Did the buyer mention that he needs the gun to “go settle a score” or something similarly menacing?
If the answer is yes to either question and that buyer goes and does something illegal with the gun you sold him, then prepare to get acquainted with real lawyers, not just those who play at law on the Internet.
Now, one could argue, and by argue I mean quibble, that strictly speaking you still aren’t responsible for his crime, but rather a different crime only tangential to the buyer’s crime(s). Well, whatever……
That argument will do nothing to quell the appertaining rage, nor will it shield you from legal consequences of your own.
“At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility?”
Was that a trick question? Because it seems like a really, really stupid question.
This – x 1,000.
NO one – unless extremely mentally incapacitated, is exempt from their responsibility to choose what choices they make, and the ensuing actions/reactions occur. Natural, logical, and physical consequences care not one whit for one’s mindset, intent, “feelings”, or blaming it on some outside influence. They will follow as the day does the night. End of story.
“At what point does it become the criminal’s responsibility? ” Immediately. That this is a question is disturbing.
It does not matter if you are ignorant about guns. Most anti civil rights people are stupid on purpose. They have chosen to be ignorant. Having arms is a civil right period. Anyone who tries to take away a law abiding person means of self defense is the enemy. They are evil. And I would tell them that. I would recommend to them to go to a range and rent some guns and have the range staff help them.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink from the fountain of firearms knowledge.
Pistol caliber conversion therapy? I like it.
Pay your taxes and take your chances.
The real purpose for guns is described in the 2nd Paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
All other uses are ancillary.
Nice!
Inside most libtard is a gun owner waiting to come out. First unfortunately they need to victimized and call for help ( Police ) which don’t show in time to save the day.
So there are, according to this author, a bunch of gun stores out there that don’t abide by background check laws and/or “allow” straw purchases?
Really? Well then, as a public service perhaps she should provide a list to help the ATF out. ?
I hear this BS quite often. The under seige Chuck’s Gunshop(Riverdale,IL)is often cited as having a large # of guns used in crime. Having bought my 1st gun from them I can assure everyone they do due diligence. Very strict and won’t even buzz you in if you’re too thuglike. Being on the border of Chiraq and having a large black clientele means lots of guns get stolen and “borrowed”. And straw purchases happen. And none is Chuck’s fault. They’re good people…
Tee hee! You said “do due”
The upshot of the cited article seems to be that FFL Gun Dealers do not secure their retail stores sufficiently to deter “smash and grab” thievery. Does that failure constitute some level of liability if guns are stolen then funneled to criminals via the “Iron Pipeline” and used in criminal acts? If the original legal owner makes it too easy to steal the object or material, is that negligence on the original, lawful owner’s part?
I think this “conversation” is about strengthening the meme that Legal Firearms Dealers need to be saddled with more regulation because making it too easy to steal guns and ammunition encourages criminal activity and sets-up a chain reaction of additional crime. Making it a crime to facilitate crime that facilitates additional crime is just perfect Leftist illogic.
Meanwhile notice the concrete-filled steel pipes shown in the photo in front of Tampa Arms Company that were installed after the smash and grab break-in.
In the documentary BLACK MARKET:THE IRON PIPELINE Security Camera footage shows thieves using a stolen Back Hoe to smash through the rear concrete block wall of a stand alone Gun Store in Georgia and subsequently stealing a quantity of guns. These thieves broke-in, gathered the guns and fled the scene all within two minutes thereby beating the arrival of the Police who had been notified of the break-in by the store’s security system when the rear wall was breached. Obviously that store’s owners failed to build the exterior walls strong enough to withstand a Back Hoe. Shame on them!
Yikes! That’s hardcore when they bring in demolition equipment to do the job. Around here they usually just steal a truck, ram the back into the shop, fill it up and take off to wherever they’ve stashed their transfer vehicle around the corner.
Yeah. I was pretty astounded when watching the report first time through. They also had vans with about six guys who jumped right through the breach with bags and hammers to smash the cases, take the guns, stuff them into the bags and hot-foot it back to the waiting vans. The Back Hoe was abandoned (just steal another for next time, I guess). The point of this example was to say this type of organized theft is fairly common, per the producer/host of the show. A testament to the lucrativeness of the Iron Pipeline.
Hey that storefront looks fimiliar!
Offhand, where is it?
I’m more familiar with the ones on Nebraska ave and Fowler, and where Hillsborough peels off I-4…
OK, it’s on Waters Ave, and it’s not in a ‘hood. The road is mostly strip malls, car repair, that kind of stuff.
Throw this into Google, go into ‘Street View’, see the area for yourself:
4023 W Waters Ave, Tampa, FL 33614
Has anyone even read the article prior to commenting.
This article is really not about whether the gun stores should feel guilty or not, it is about how attractive a target a gun store looks to thieves. Many stores have really poor security measures which make stealing firearms WAY to easy. There was a robbery in our town in which the store had no security bars over the windows/doors. basically a smash and grab. I don’t believe the extreme measures (i.e. putting guns back in a safe from the displays) are necessary, but come on.
I believe if a store has very lax theft prevention efforts, they DO share responsibility for what happens to the firearm.
“I believe if a store has very lax theft prevention efforts, they DO share responsibility for what happens to the firearm.”
Ok, why?
What are they doing that is unlawful? (Even unlawful is a stretch, because many laws themselves should be considered unlawful, but I’ll give you that…what law are they breaking?)
So, the gun that inspired this musing, *before* being stolen was used to kill noone; after being stolen was used to kill someone. It’s almost as if what matters is who holds the gun.
The gun store owner is asking: “How far should I go in feeling responsible for something someone else did?” which would never occur to bang-bang the thief. Or, it seems to our new-arrival troll, Cisco Kid, above.
I, for one, blame Cisco for what happened. If only he wasn’t such an impediment to restricting people who shouldn’t be involved in polite society in the first place, Our Example Criminal wouldn’t have been running loose to steal a gun, or use it do kill someone. Maybe get on that, kid.
As noted already, a gun store owner can go above and beyond “due diligence” in selling a firearm and STILL get sued if the firearm is used to harm someone. He can dot every “I” and cross every “T” of the required paperwork, conduct every background check required, swear on a stack of bibles that there was nothing about the buyer which raised any suspicions – and still end up in a courtroom with his life’s work and wealth at stake because all it takes is a sympathetic plaintiff and a gullible jury to get a conviction and a huge award Even if the gun store owner prevails, in most states the defendant can’t recoup his expenses in defending himself and as the old saw goes, “Talk is cheap – until you hire a lawyer.”
When I first went into the insurance business as an investigator/adjuster after being retired from the cop shop I was bewildered at how flimsy some of the claimant’s cases were and my boss scooped me in to an absolute verity when he said, “In the United States you can sue anybody for ANYTHING.”
Hint:
When it comes to law making and law breaking, the person knowingly committing a crime is 100% always at fault.
Mystery solved.
Knowingly willingly and intentionally sells said gun to a prohibited person. As much as the left would like you can’t completely regulate free will without bringing back slavery.
This talk needs to be held with the medical industry, they kill how many every year with their “mistakes”?
I don’t ascribe to that line of thinking. First off, try that with vehicle fatalities, which is commonly used. When they drop below deaths with firearms, then what?
Second, medical care nor driving a vehicle (arguably) is a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Any time you let “safety” creep into the argument, you open a door wide enough to allow courts to determine that public safety outweighs individual rights. If 10 million people a year were killed with firearms, it should not infringe our rights, and we should not allow the discussion to even begin. This is why many pro-freedom organizations have realized that no compromise is the only way forward.
We might have a discussion on what types of weaponry is suitable/allowed under that scenario, but not the right itself.
Quote————Any time you let “safety” creep into the argument, you open a door wide enough to allow courts to determine that public safety outweighs individual rights. If 10 million people a year were killed with firearms, it should not infringe our rights, and we should not allow the discussion to even begin. This is why many pro-freedom organizations have realized that no compromise is the only way forward. —————-Quote
Sorry but your wrong there as history has proven with the Courts rulings. Lets give several historical examples.
No Constitutional right is an absolute right. Your freedom of speech does not allow you to yell fire in a theater or yell gun in a crowd of people as it does result in a great amount of unnecessary death. In other words its illegal because of loss of human life and technically against “complete freedom of speech” but not against “common sense” something the Far Right has never had.
The Courts have made rulings in the past and then they have changed their minds on the Second Amendment many times. Once it only covered military weapons only (1930’s case on a sawed off shotgun) but when full auto sub guns came into use the Supreme Court reversed course and implied not once but many times since then that it was legal to ban full auto sales (Your God Reagan passed that one) and later bans on semi-autos in numerous States were ruled legal as well, for example Connecticut, New York, California, Massachusetts etc I am sure I missed some as they are banning them so fast every day its hard to keep up with the latest gun ban laws, which are always upheld by the power mad courts.
Your Constitutional right to life is now a farce as well as California banned the right to concealed carry and it was upheld by the courts while they cleverly refused to rule on previous “illegal laws” that banned open carry thereby banning all right to protect ones self when leaving the confines of your dwelling. The California Courts even ruled that only the “power elite” (themselves) and there henchmen (the jack booted storm troopers) have the right to be armed.
The Constitutional rights are not only not absolute but totally meaningless as well as the Constitution never has gave you any rights. The reality is the corrupt courts give you your rights and they have always, I repeat they have always been heavily influenced by public opinion on many Constitutional rights. Example: Restricting or taking away voting rights in the past, putting 100,000 American law abiding citizens in concentration camps (Japanese Americans) in WWII, upholding laws requiring minorities which banned interracial marriage, sitting only in the back of a bus for minorities, banning them from White’s only restaurants, upholding laws banning them from Drinking at Whites only water fountains, laws that made gay marriage illegal, upholding laws (until recently) permitting religious fanatics from selling to them even though it was a business open to the public.
As you can see quoting your Constitutional rights is to ignore History. The Supreme Court is appointed as dictators for life and they know they can and do get away with anything and with any outrageous excuse as long as they do not stray too far from “current” public opinion and the public itself could not care less about Constitutional rights as long as the rights taken away are against groups of “the other” people they, fear or misunderstand or hate.
The latest shocker is that the Trump-o-philes are beginning to admit they know damn well Trump is an illegitimate President that was by and large elected by the Russians but the Far Right see this as a God-send not only this time but hopes the “Ruskies” will destroy the Democratic Party and create in the U.S. a “one party Conservative State” which is by any other name a “Dictatorship” which the Far Right sees as the ultimate nirvana or utopian form of government. Are you beginning to hear shouts of “Heil to our Dear Leader”.
Now you know why we fked up by having a Revolution which resulted in us missing out on a Parliamentary Government that can change outrageous human rights violations quickly such as the fact that we still do not have an amendment to the Constitution that gives “equal rights” to every citizen. Did you know women still do not have equal rights and that millions of Americans are barred from becoming President simply because they are “Legally Second Class Citizens” i.e. citizens but not born in this country. All are human rights outrages that other Industrialized Countries do not tolerate. Horror of Horrors other Industrialized Countries also elect their leaders through “real Democracy” by direct vote not “Sham Democracy” such as we have as we do not elect people by the direct vote of the people. Again the Corrupt Founding Fathers feared the people and Democracy that is exactly why they set up the “Electoral College” or a sham democracy to fool “the unwashed”.
The Constitution was deliberately set up to make it almost impossible to change as it was set up to protect the “ruling elite” not the “common man”. It was a mistake that should have been changed long ago.
In conclusion never quote the “Second Amendment” as a “right” as it is only a “right” as long as public opinion and therefore the corrupt Supreme Court approves of it. That’s already History.
You spent a bunch of time typing something everyone already knows. My rights end when I infringe on yours. That is an *individual* application (called freedom), and the way this Country was intended to run. Gun laws are therefore distinctly different. I am not a criminal, yet I can’t buy a new machine gun because I *might* be a criminal in the future. Which we don’t do with voting, cars, alcohol, you name it. We do not ban movie theaters because I might yell fire. You “ban” the act (yelling fire when there isn’t one) not the mechanism (the individual). You ban murder, not the mechanism.
You have a bit of a problem inferring what I believe, and who I admire for what. While I think Reagan was good at many things, trying to “compromise” with the anti-freedom crowd about guns was a huge failing of his. Perhaps it was naivete about the true agenda of the anti-freedom crowd, or simply disinterest/no education on the topic. I don’t know. We’ve learned that there is no such thing as compromise when it comes to freedom hating gun banners. I can just as easily show you the progression of failed gun laws up to present day, but you obviously already know them. If they worked, you wouldn’t be here arguing we need more of them.
Unfortunately, while at the end of the day we will never agree on this topic overall, these sorts of discussion waste effort that should be used to talk about inner city violence, reform of the criminal justice system and our mental health care in the US, things that would change the dynamic on violence overall (not just violence committed with firearms) and which we would probably very much agree on. Band-aids are stupid. Get to the root causes of violence. Neither side seems interested in doing the hard work necessary to do so.
Quote———————-. I can just as easily show you the progression of failed gun laws up to present day, but you obviously already know them. If they worked, you wouldn’t be here arguing we need more of them.—————Quote
Yes “some” have failed (but not the Brady law in regards to new gun purchases) and I already told you “why” but as usual your reading comprehension is zero. Go back and read “why” they have failed. Or is that too much effort. I would suggest you have your wife read my post and explain it too you as its above your comprehension.
There are other laws that did not fail as well such as vetting of all full auto weapons and silencers from as far back as the 1930’s. No law is perfect but if we did not have the two just mentioned can you imagine how many thousands and thousands of un-vetted full auto weapons and silencers would be in the hands of every moron street punk out there wanting to commit a crime with them. Its too horrific to even think about.
In conclusion Federal Laws have many times been successful but State laws existing in the thousands are meaningless because States with lax laws simply funnel guns into States with strict laws. If you had comprehended my prior posts I would not have to keep repeating it for you.
Wrong. Because of first amendment protections, it is unconstitutional to prevent someone from yelling fire in a theater, or to yell “gun” in a crowd of people. Please familiarize yourself with the legal concept of prior restraint.
No, it isn’t illegal, unless and until it leads to some actual harm (such as loss of life). But the exercise of speech remains free to take place, under all circumstances.
Which is why our rights are not dependent upon the courts. Our rights come from our Creator. The whims of the court are only allowed to stand because law-abiding, free people are incredibly long-suffering, and we allow them to continue to trample our rights because we don’t wish to unleash the hell that will come upon them to set things right. At some point, if the courts keep pushing, our longsuffering will reach its limit – and then we will of necessity use force to assert that our rights come from our Creator, and not from the courts. (See also: the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolutionary War.)
Trying out a new stand-up routine?
Filed under: typical, progressive psychological projection.
Do include this bit in your stand-up routine. It is especially hilarious after 8 years of Obama worship.
We were founded, intentionally, as a constitutional republic of sovereign states, which is not synonymous with “sham democracy”. The founding fathers intentionally did not create a democracy – and clearly explained why. If you want to hyperventilate about the Electoral College, perhaps you should try Salon or HuffPo?
The right to keep and bear arms is a right, and will always be a right. The constitution doesn’t grant it (rather, the constitution recognizes its pre-existence); therefore, the courts established under the constitution cannot take it away.
However, it only remains an effective right as long as there remain people willing to assert it as a right.
Thanks for taking the time to respond as you did Chip, although our ignorant freedom-hating friend doesn’t believe a word of it. Many, many of us do.
As shown by dear leaders election. lol.
It’s simple. Guns are different because armed people can’t be pushed around. Those doing the pushing don’t care about hunting or self defense. They just want to push.
And that’s a lot easier with disarmed people , especially when you’ve got armed men backing up the pushers.
It is unfortunate that even this sight pulled the quote from another source about stolen guns. Here is the stolen gun article about the owners quote, this is sad this publication changed the intent.
https://www.citylab.com/crime/2017/07/coming-to-a-city-near-you-stolen-guns/531141/
Are you surprised the citylabs writer does not know anything about the subject?
Where in their article is the fact the the murder rate with firearms stolen from gun stores, and also stolen from homes are both DOWN about 60% in the past 25 years according to the DOJ data on sources of guns used in crime?
Let’s look at a coupel fo quotes she uses:
“Although the number of illegal guns spilling into the market is on the rise, the latest federal budget doesn’t allocate more money to the ATF to help stem the tide, Gardiner says.”
Uhm, that looks bad until you realize total gun sales have been rising for decades. In fact the proportion of stolen guns to gun sale is DOWN over 30, 20, 15, 10, 5 year trends.
“Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, agrees that inadequate regulations play a role in the gun burglary boom.”
Ok so
1) this school has gotten $300 million from Bloomberg, and advocate of gun bans and confiscation.
2) “gun burglary boom” again another expert who fails to mention murder with stolen guns is DOWN, and the overall portion of stolen guns to guns on the market or guns owned by individuals, are both DOWN as a proportion of total guns.
What citylabs did, was avoid talking to a neutral criminal justices expert, or federal law enforcement expert with actual knowledge of the trends who was not a lobbyist (and Brady and Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg are advocates for more gun control and effectively lobbyists)
1. The guns were stolen.
2. Is a cement wall reasonable security?
3. At what point do we start holding criminals reasonable and not victims?
Reasonable criminals? You have different criminals than the ones around here.
Talking about responsibility.
If FFLs are responsible for crimes committed with guns stolen from them:
We have a former president who released an awful lot of criminals some who were convicted of gun charges from prison.
Some of those went on to commit more crimes.
Why is he not responsible?
Sanctuary cities sheild illegal aliens who have criminal charges against them, who have gone on to kill innocent people.
Are these citie and their politicians not responsible?
Chicago as well as other cities have judges who fail to put dangerous people in jail, keeping a revolving door of justice.
Tell me shouldn’t those judges be responsible when their protected criminals are released only to continue victimizing others?
I would say they, by their actions are responsible, as it is their responsibility to keep society safe.
Maybe if they did their job your LGS wouldn’t have a problem with criminals.
“In 2016 there were 24,984 children shot with guns both maimed (often for life) and killed. I think this shows how asinine your reply was.”
This is false.
The CDC has the data online.
2016:
1,357 murdered between the ages of 0 and 17
5,336 injured between the ages of 0 and 17 (the CDC does NOT state how serious the injury was — this could be a graze or an injury requiring serious surgery.)
Look up the data yourself:
https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html
29,000 kids dead in one year from guns? Horse-shit.
To Floyd
Quote—————–29,000 kids dead in one year from guns? Horse-shirt.——————–
Not exactly at all. I do stand corrected on the number of children wounded and killed but the figure did represent the total amount of people that were harmed by gun violence. That figure is correct. So therefore the original response to the original story on this forum was about people who are harmed by guns that are stolen from Gun Stores and all of those people are absolutely included in the overall figure quoted which again totally supports my original statement that gun stores should be required to cut down on the numbers of these shootings an deaths by responsible storage of firearms to make it much more difficult for crooks to just walk in and pick guns up by the basket full at will any day of the week they wish.
And I might add that Chips in the heads comment that Gun stores already take proper precautions is asinine in the extreme.
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
You are asserting that all of those injuries are caused using firearms stolen from gun stores – an assertion without any evidence whatsoever.
As already pointed out: thefts from gun stores constitute 3% of all annual firearm thefts. Do you really believe that 100% of firearm injuries caused by stolen guns happen using firearms from 3% of the entire pool of stolen firearms?
That only 7,500 firearms are stolen each year, from the entire stock of gun store inventory (approximately 10 million firearms per year produced/sold in the US domestically), is prima facie evidence that gun stores already take proper precautions. Fewer than one tenth of one percent (and even that assumes that all such thefts are of new firearms – total NICS checks are over 20 million) of firearms in gun store inventory are stolen each year.
As for “asinine in the extreme,” I believe you demonstrated it above, with your implication that 100% of firearm injuries caused by stolen guns happen using firearms from 3% of the entire pool of stolen firearms.
quote——————–You are asserting that all of those injuries are caused using firearms stolen from gun stores – an assertion without any evidence whatsoever.
As already pointed out: thefts from gun stores constitute 3% of all annual firearm thefts. Do you really believe that 100% of firearm injuries caused by stolen guns happen using firearms from 3% of the entire pool of stolen firearms?
And I might add that Chips in the heads comment that Gun stores already take proper precautions is asinine in the extreme.
That only 7,500 firearms are stolen each year, from the entire stock of gun store inventory (approximately 10 million firearms per year produced/sold in the US domestically), is prima facie evidence that gun stores already take proper precautions. Fewer than one tenth of one percent (and even that assumes that all such thefts are of new firearms – total NICS checks are over 20 million) of firearms in gun store inventory are stolen each year.
As for “asinine in the extreme,” I believe you demonstrated it above, with your implication that 100% of firearm injuries caused by stolen guns happen using firearms from 3% of the entire pool of stolen firearms.
—————————quote
You failed to read examples by other people on this very story. Another fellow said his gun store was robbed and they did not even have bars on the windows. Now how can you keep making the outlandish claims that all gun stores take enough precautions already. That’s a joke and you know it. If they did we would not have all these guns ending up on the street in horrific crimes.
Again also just as I have repeatedly said. Your found of playing the numbers game and saying, “so what if a only a couple of thousand people are killed”, its not enough to worry me because it was not me or my family. Just one death is one unnecessary death too many. Normal sane people understand this, but you obviously do not and if you look up this type of behavior its classified as a psychopathic personality disorder.
“In 2016 there were 24,984 children shot with guns both maimed (often for life) and killed. I think this shows how asinine your reply was.”
This is false.
The CDC has the data online.
2016:
1,357 murdered between the ages of 0 and 17
5,336 injured between the ages of 0 and 17 (the CDC does NOT state how serious the injury was — this could be a graze or an injury requiring serious surgery.)
Look up the data yourself:
https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html
29,000 kids dead in one year from guns? Horse-shirt.
More importantly, you can set up the query to show the age/race/location of the injury or death. The vast majority of both injury and deaths occurs after age 15. (Change output grouping to AGE or RACE). The results are enlightening. It’s a tragedy that young black males (who make up less than 6% of the population) account for more than 45% of deaths.
To Floyd
Quote—————-More importantly, you can set up the query to show the age/race/location of the injury or death. The vast majority of both injury and deaths occurs after age 15. (Change output grouping to AGE or RACE). The results are enlightening. It’s a tragedy that young black males (who make up less than 6% of the population) account for more than 45% of deaths.————–Quote
Now your acting as crazy as Chips in the Head. Your arguing over body counts. And I noticed you insinuated black kids do not count when they get killed or maimed. If that’s not being racist I do not know what would be.
At least your not racist when it comes to age as you seem to indicate that dead teenagers don’t count either unless of course one of them happens to be your kid.
What’s racist is liberal policies that have continued to oppress inner-city blacks since slavery. You know, places like Chicago, where liberals have run the place for more than four decades straight, but for some reason the black on black homicide rate is astronomical. It’s also racist to ignore that fact, because it means you aren’t interested in solving the problem.
No one is a nutcase here except the one projecting in this forum…
Quote—————-What’s racist is liberal policies that have continued to oppress inner-city blacks since slavery.————–Quote
Actually if you knew anything about the rise in murder and crime in all our inner cities its actually Liberal policies that made helped reduce crime not increase it. The real cause of the rapid rise in crime and murder was the exporting of high paying jobs overseas after Reagan destroyed Union Power in the U.S. because it was the Unions that prevented tariffs from being lowered which let in low priced foreign goods which in turn destroyed the high paying jobs in the U.S. coupled with exporting the few that remained. As many as 4 generations of people in the inner cities have grown up with low paying or no jobs at all. So quit shouting your Right Wing Ignorance as to the real cause of crime in the cities. As a matter of fact it was liberal policies that reduced black slavery not increased it. One of the major reasons for the riots of 1967 was the fact that blacks were discriminated against in rental housing, buying housing and being prevented from being hired in city jobs and in some cased even retail jobs. It was liberalism that ended all this after the far right racists fought them every step of the way. Go back to school Jethro as usual you have gotten history completely backwards.
To Chips in the Head our resident Nut Case
Quote————Wrong. Because of first amendment protections, it is unconstitutional to prevent someone from yelling fire in a theater, or to yell “gun” in a crowd of people. Please familiarize yourself with the legal concept of prior restraint.—————-quote
Look you Lunatic if you ever did that see how fast your nut case ass does not end up in prison. Quit running off at the mouth and making an absolute fool of yourself.
Quote—————-
In other words its illegal because of loss of human life and technically against “complete freedom of speech” but not against “common sense” something the Far Right has never had.————Quote
Quote———–No, it isn’t illegal, unless and until it leads to some actual harm (such as loss of life). But the exercise of speech remains free to take place, under all circumstances.————–Quote
Hey Chips are you hitting the bottle tonight. Go back and read my post. I repeat, I said “the loss of human life”——What part of this did you not understand genius of law. LOL And by the way even if there was no loss of human life Moron they would also get you for “inducing panic”, “disturbing the peace”, “causing disruption and harm to a business through loss of revenue” just to name a few. Try again Genius your making a fool of yourself. Your so divorced from reality its laughable.
Quote———————-Which is why our rights are not dependent upon the courts. Our rights come from our Creator. The whims of the court are only allowed to stand because law-abiding, free people are incredibly long-suffering, and we allow them to continue to trample our rights because we don’t wish to unleash the hell that will come upon them to set things right. At some point, if the courts keep pushing, our longsuffering will reach its limit – and then we will of necessity use force to assert that our rights come from our Creator, and not from the courts. (See also: the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolutionary War.)—————Quote
Will skip the Religious fanaticism but lets get right back to reality. As Mao Zedong once said “Power comes from the barrel of a gun”. Now I am about to bring you back down to reality. Today with security camera’s everywhere and the Government monitoring every facet of your life through its spy network on our computer systems your fantasy of an uprising is a laughable joke. Next you will be telling me your pop gun would stand up against Helicopter Gun Ships, Tanks and armored personnel carriers all staffed with brain washed black shirted jack booted robotic storm troopers that would gun you down before you got off a shot. Patriotic Hollywood movies are not reality Jethro.
Quote—————–We were founded, intentionally, as a constitutional republic of sovereign states, which is not synonymous with “sham democracy”. The founding fathers intentionally did not create a democracy – and clearly explained why. If you want to hyperventilate about the Electoral College, perhaps you should try Salon or HuffPo?————-Quote
Go back to school Jethro. The Electoral College was not the only thing the Founding Fathers did to subvert Democracy and create a sham one. In the beginning you had to own a certain amount of land and women and minorities were not given the vote as well. In short the Founding Fathers reserved power for themselves, not the common people, and so to a degree it remains today as the people do not have a democracy in any sense of the word as they do not elect the President but the “power elite do”. Gerrymandering is another trick that is still used to subvert elections into nothing more than a sham and ditto for the Electoral College which gives results in some states that give a persons vote worth many more times than people’s votes in other states. In short it resulted recently in twice throwing the election to Republican Presidents that were not elected by the majority of Americans. In case you were not aware of it this is “not democracy” in any sense of the world. The Ancient Greeks would have laughed at our system and rightly so.
History lesson Jethro: The old “Minute Man” argument was a joke and a total fantasy even back during the Revolution because without the French Troops, Navy, Money and weapons our so called Revolution would have failed with the incompetent leader we had at the time, Washington, who lost more battles then he won and was almost captured twice. It was the French Fleet who drove away the British Fleet and it was the French Army that laid siege to Yorktown with their artillery while the U.S. Hillbillies (who had no artillery) stood around with their mouths open watching the Magnificent French Troops in action. When the British surrendered it was noted that the British took no notice of the Americans as they seemed to be looking right through them at the French who they glared at. There was a reason for this as the Americans did little to nothing during the battle of Concord, the last battle of the war.
Quote——————-The right to keep and bear arms is a right, and will always be a right. The constitution doesn’t grant it (rather, the constitution recognizes its pre-existence); therefore, the courts established under the constitution cannot take it away.However, it only remains an effective right as long as there remain people willing to assert it as a right.—————-Quote
Your idea that “the right to own arms pre-existed” is only accurate to the point that the British permitted arms to be owned by the people both in the Colonies and in their own country as well. It was not some pre-ordained right handed to them by a ghostly Apparition standing behind a burning bush. Go preach to the religious fanatics, gun ownership had nothing to do with religion rather it was a right given by the British Government and today the U.S. Government can and has restricted those rights and not always without very good reasons. Its called “being civilized” something totally alien to people like you.
Like most Right Wing Nut Cases you continue to hide your head in the sand and ignore U.S. Court decisions dating all the way back to the 1930’s and down to the present day. The amount of gun bans and even the right to carry a gun for self protection has been flushed down the toilet and this is recent Court Decisions which I have already alluded too, I do not need to repeat to you again. That is Reality, not some Nut Case pontificating while wearing rose colored spectacles while gazing out of his ivory tower.
As populations increase unemployment increases, crime increases, and insanity increases and not in a 1 to 1 ratio. In order for the “power elite” to keep their power and in order for them to “keep order” gun rights around the world, including in the U.S. have been shrinking drastically since WWII. The days of walking into your local hard ware store and buying a machine gun over the counter have long since past and for a lot of good reasons as it caused too much mayhem and murder. Laws are not necessary always bad and the evolution of gun laws world wide certainly has proved necessary as you just cannot let anyone buy a gun or anyone buy any weapon he wants just because its “fun to own”.
Are you wholly incapable of engaging in discussion without resorting to ad hominem? Is your mental capacity really so diminished?
There is a difference between laws that prohibit an utterance, and laws the criminalize the adverse impact of a permitted utterance. First amendment protections render prior restraint laws unconstitutional, even while legal consequences for adverse impact of first amendment-protected utterances are constitutional. Are you unable to differentiate between the two?
Not a bad idea. Maybe that way, you would have a fighting chance.
Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater does not cause loss of life. Nobody drops dead at the mere utterance, as if someone just pointed a wand at them and said, “Avada Kevadra”.
The mere utterance, itself, is not illegal, and no law exists that prohibits it. (You would know that, if you understood the concept of prior restraint.)
Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater likewise does not inherently induce panic or disturb the peace. It may have no impact whatsoever.
The mere utterance, itself, is not illegal, and no law exists that prohibits it. (You would know that, if you understood the concept of prior restraint.)
Knowing the maturity level and diminished ability for logical analysis you demonstrate in your comments, I would be concerned if you thought me anything other than a fool.
The Declaration of Independence is mere “Religious fanaticism”, eh? The belief of 95% of the world that a Creator exists is mere “Religious fanaticism”, eh?
The belief in the concept of “rights” absent the existence of a Creator is pure sophistry.
The idea that those of us who exercise the right to keep and bear arms harbor the “fantasy of an uprising” is nothing but the psychological projection of progressives.
Yawn
If it was the one you seem to have attended? No, thanks.
The source documents are all available. I don’t need them regurgitated to me. I have read them. Perhaps you should try doing the same.
The Founding Fathers never claimed to have instituted a democracy in the Grecian model. They stated clearly that they instituted a republic, intentionally with a power tension between the sovereign states and a federal government. There was no “sham” involved.
(N.B. Is that supposed to be some sort of insult?)
So, what you’re really saying here is: you’re French?
Oh, dear: is the mere mention of a Creator a microaggression, capable of triggering you?
You hate religion. Noted. But to my previous point: the belief in the concept of “rights” absent the existence of a Creator is pure sophistry.
Keep biting at the ankles. It simply proves that you have no real arguments.
You keep harping on about court cases. The courts do not grant rights. The people grant the courts authority.
And how can I be both an uncivilized Jethro, and also gaze out of an ivory tower?
I’ll give you an A for effort, though, in changing up your ad hominem. It was a good try.
Machine guns were never a problem. Violent criminals – in the form of mob bosses and other gangsters – were then, as they are now in other forms, the problem.
Getting the Al Capones of the world off the street fixed that problem. Guns being available from the hardware store had nothing to do with it.
Statists like you always want to dictate to people what they can and cannot, should and should not, do.
I and tens of millions of others have bought guns merely because (among myriad other reasons) they are “fun to own”. We’re not harming anyone with them, and it’s none of your business.
Chip, it’s admirable you try, but as shown by the reaction of the left after Trump’s election, when faced with fact they ignore it. Cisco is a prime example, and methinks you are wasting time, although if liberals had the ability to be as tolerant as they say they are, he might learn something from you.
It’s too bad he probably thinks he’s “won” when people stop responding to him, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than spend it on someone who’d argue with a dictionary.
I figure, since the TTAG mods continue to let an obvious, known troll post inflammatory, trolling comments, that they do so because they are expecting a logical rebuttal. So, that’s why I reply.
I have no hope that cisco kid, 2ASux, or any of our other resident trolls will ever be swayed.
I think if all of us on the side of freedom can keep from resorting to calling them names (as opposed to pointing out actual idiocy that comes from the ignorance of fact), eventually everyone is going to realize that the lunatics on the far left are the real threat to society.
If anything, others reading your posts can use them as an example of how to respond to angry, combative, unintelligent, but loud, adversaries, while showing what the pro-freedom crowd is really about. Not what the left’s narrative is.
Quote———————You keep harping on about court cases. The courts do not grant rights. The people grant the courts authority.
—————–Quote
Yes I keep harping about court cases because you refuse to face stone cold reality of recent court decisions. You can wish they did not exist but that’s reality even though you chose to ignore it.
You also live in a fantasy world by claiming “the people grant the courts authority”. Sorry Jethro they do not because we do not have a direct democracy and never have had one. Even the opposing political parties are often completely shut out of the selection process when picking a new court justice and you still call this Democracy. Its laughable.
Quote——————-Machine guns were never a problem. Violent criminals – in the form of mob bosses and other gangsters – were then, as they are now in other forms, the problem.
Getting the Al Capones of the world off the street fixed that problem. Guns being available from the hardware store had nothing to do with it.————–Quote
I like debating with you because your bizarre responses are totally devoid of common sense and reality and it makes this too easy. Now your telling us machine guns have a mind of their own and it did not involve humans committing serious crimes of total mayhem with them. Ever watch some of the documentaries on Chicago when in broad daylight on a well traveled Chicago street a whole line of mobster cars opened up on a barber shop with Thompson machine guns. The full auto legislation which put severe vetting into play did indeed take these weapons out of the hands of the majority of gangsters and ditto for the silencers as well. The laws were needed and they worked and since the 1930’s they have proven they did work indeed. I ask you historical genius how many people in Chicago this year got gunned down with Thompson sub machine guns. Now try and lie your way our of this one. Answer is of course not one. But you will run off at the mouth with your usual blather about the current mayhem in Chicago as a failure of gun laws when indeed the laws we need do not yet exist such as vetting of all second hand guns sales, mandatory safes and security systems as well. Again you will ignore reality and say “it would inconvenience me as I could not care less how many lives are saves. You have said this repeatedly in your own posts on this subject and stated again and again “the body count can never be too high”.
Quote———————Statists like you always want to dictate to people what they can and cannot, should and should not, do. I and tens of millions of others have bought guns merely because (among myriad other reasons) they are “fun to own”. We’re not harming anyone with them, and it’s none of your business—–quote
Of course we Statists want to change things because if it was not for us there would be no Brady Bill or no 1930’s bill that vetting machine guns and silencers. And yes just because its fun to shoot them does not give you the right just to walk into a hard ware store and buy one without any paperwork because said paperwork might inconvenience you because plenty of people who were not vetted did indeed commit wholesale murder and mayhem with them that is exactly why the laws were passed in the first place. A remember crime genius putting a few gangsters in jail did not solve the crime problem as there is always at least 1,000 to take the place of everyone you do put in jails otherwise crime would have practically disappeared decades ago. What fantasy world do you live in anyway. Sorry you lose on that response it makes about as much sense as your harping about body counts not being high enough to do anything about the unnecessary deaths.
Quote————–The idea that those of us who exercise the right to keep and bear arms harbor the “fantasy of an uprising” is nothing but the psychological projection of progressives.—————-quote
Ok General Genius of the modern day Jethro Minute Men. How do you stand up against a modern army. Fact is you do not. You do what you are told just as the German People under Hitler did and they did what they were told and it took multiple nations to go to war with the small country of Germany to defeat them and it took a good 6 years to beat them. But you in your fantasy world of Minute Men will save the day with your little pop gun in your hand. Things like that may happen in Hollywood but not the real world. Sane people are aware of this.
Quote———————-Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater likewise does not inherently induce panic or disturb the peace. It may have no impact whatsoever.
The mere utterance, itself, is not illegal, and no law exists that prohibits it. (You would know that, if you understood the concept of prior restraint.)———————-quote
Now your telling us the “instinct for human survival does not exist and the Police would never arrest someone when they feel its necessary to prevent that person and others from doing similar dangerous behavior that threatens public safety. Sorry that is not the real world. Again how long do you think you would stay out of jail if you tried such dangerous behavior in a movie theater or crowd even if no one was harmed. I for one would be calling the cops and pointing you out and watching them beat you to the ground, hand cuff you and haul you off to the lunatic bin. No, we cannot predict that people would be killed or hurt in every instance but the law of averages and past incidents of crowd stampedes have occurred in the past and in the present at many rock concerts and other gatherings for a variety of reasons. That is why we have experts in crowd control to prevent crowd stampedes. But you in your total arrogance claim “No this would never happened because I say so”. Sorry we do not believe you because all of us have seen too many news reports to the contrary in regards to this type of loss of life.
So in conclusion you may indulge in all the fantasies you want but yes you do not have unlimited freedom of speech and yes it is against the law to do such things such as yell fire in a theater.
Quote——————-The Declaration of Independence is mere “Religious fanaticism”, eh? The belief of 95% of the world that a Creator exists is mere “Religious fanaticism”, eh The belief in the concept of “rights” absent the existence of a Creator is pure sophistry. Quote
I never said the Declaration of Independence was Religious Fanaticism, but you did by attaching some mystical religious meaning to it. The Founding Fathers went out of there way to separate church and state and if you had ever bothered to read their statements in regards to the this you would get the strong impression that they only paid the merest lip service to religion and only when they absolutely had to. Many of their statements border on agnosticism and even outright atheism. There were discussions of Deism and Theistic Rationalism and Thomas Paine, never a U.S. Citizen, who was most responsible for igniting the revolution, ended up being ostracized and shunned to this very day over his view of Creation. Even today I am not aware of any major or even minor monument to him. And as far as your fantasies about how right you are about religion I will put my beliefs in the writings of some of the most intelligent scientists that ever were born, and guess what, they for the most part were agnostics at best and more than a few outright atheists if you had bother to pay attention to what they had to say about their work and their findings. I could mention Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein or Richard Dawkins or Steven Hawking who by the way stated ,”No, the Universe was not necessarily invented by any God” implying it just “may have always existed”. And of course there is History to prove you wrong as well, because no living creature has ever come back from the dead period. No God has ever shown himself to the living and no God has ever shown himself to the multitudes of people who want him to show himself. Just because the “masses” want something to be so does not make it reality as seem to be shouting from the roof tops. Considering the fact that the world would not exist or have evolved and functioned if it were “not for the law of the jungle” where the strong devour the weak the world had better hope that people like Dawkins and Hawking are right. The other scenario is too frightening to even contemplate. In other words if there was a conscience creator he was made of pure evil and considering the amount of animal and human suffering on the planet since day one that idea is not far fetched at all. Even some of the scientists of George Washington’s day knew that the world was so evil that if there was a “conscience creator” he withdrew after creating the world and is now no where to be found.
In Europe today as well as Britain so many churches have shut down do to lack of people attending them many are now bingo parlors, hotels and even public libraries. So do not pontificate about multitudes of “the believers” in these modern days. You are free to worship in private in your own church or private dwelling and engage in your religious superstitions including prayer , ritual and incantations by the light of the moon but do not try and bring it into the gun discussion or the discussion about the Constitution or the Founding Fathers who would have made the Christian religion mandatory for everyone or if not at least a belief in “some sort” of religion as a pre-requisite for voting, citizenship or public office. They did not do this and made it law that you and religious fanatics like you have no right to shove your beliefs down the throats of every one else. That is exactly why you do not have the right to shove it down the throats of everyone else’s children if they attend a public school. Leave this to the private religious schools and churches. This of course you will not agree with.
Quote—————The Founding Fathers never claimed to have instituted a democracy in the Grecian model. They stated clearly that they instituted a republic, intentionally with a power tension between the sovereign states and a federal government. There was no “sham” involved.——————-quote
Of course there was no sham “back then” because they never intended a democracy and the people back then were well aware of this, it was all about keeping them “in power” over the actual will of the people. Its only “today” that people have the cockeyed notion that we have a democracy. I already told you just a few of the ways they screwed thousands of people even back then out of the political process. Even many White men were screwed out of voting. And our Electoral College is an outrage against the will of the American people. Stop worshiping them as “Gods on Earth” they were not, they were every bit as disingenuous and power mad as todays corrupt politicians and we ended up in a totally unnecessary war that never should have been and we lost out on forming a parliamentary and coalition form of government. Why do you think we have nothing but gridlock today in government. Today we have two extreme parties with no center right or center left to govern through compromise We got stuck with a Constitution that was deliberately written so that it is almost impossible to change and as just one example we still do not even have an equal rights amendment or have a law that dictates future environmental policy like other industrialized nations do to prevent the coming destruction of the world. Yea, tell me how great a Constitutional Government is. Its the worst mistake ever to befall this Nation. Parliamentary governments get things done much faster and change mistakes much faster as well because they “can” change mistakes unlike the screwed up Constitutional Government written in stone that we have. The Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the problems of a modern society with over population, food shortages in the 3rd world countries or the mechanical or medical advancements of todays age all of which made the Constitution as outdated as the “Brown Bess musket”. Not all of the Constitution is worthless or outdated but too much of it is so divorced from todays world it is a mill stone around the neck of both the people and the even of the government itself.
European Nations with coalition parliamentary governments saw the dangers of global warming and they got things done to help clean up the environment while we are still arguing over how much money the Republicans might lose if they attempt to save the planet from destruction. They ague the majority of the worlds scientist cannot be right when their warnings will cost them any of their greed monger profits. Many know they will be dead and gone by the time the earth destructs anyway so they say “we don’t give a damn”.
To chips in the head
Quote—————I figure, since the TTAG mods continue to let an obvious, known troll post inflammatory, trolling comments, that they do so because they are expecting a logical rebuttal. So, that’s why I reply.
I have no hope that cisco kid, 2ASux, or any of our other resident trolls will ever be swayed.————–Quote
Your want the typical Right Wing Dictatorial Forum where there is no difference of opinion allowed and everyone must subscribe to you diatribes otherwise they are considered trolls. You cannot stand real debate and that of course is the mark of a coward. I must say if the Republican Party played by your rules in their Republican convention to chose their candidate for President your God Trump would have been kicked out of the very first debate and disqualified as a candidate. You know what they say,’ if you cannot stand the heat get out of the kitchen’. I have never called you a troll because I am not afraid of you or your philosophy and I enjoy showing every one how wrong you are on your outlandish diatribes of freedom without responsibility, money over human life and suffering, racism, bigotry and a fear of change even if it is for the good of all Americans in making this country a more civilized country to live in. I don’t need to shout troll like you do because I am not a coward and unlike you I am not afraid to stand up for what is right and just therefore I would never want you banned because then I could not use you as an “the bad example” to teach the younger generation how to make this a better and above all a more civilized country to live in.
No, I want a forum in which all contributors are held to the publicly stated commenting policies. I want a forum in which those who support opposing views can express them cogently and without resorting to logical fallacy.
To the contrary, I continue to debate you, civilly and without responding in kind to your ad hominem. I will let your responses speak for themselves.
And I do not call you a troll because you hold an opposing ideology. I call you a troll because your modus operandi is to avoid engaging in sincere, civil debate, and instead to resort to ad hominem and other logical fallacy.
Nonsense. I have never advocated for freedom without responsibility.
Nonsense. I have never advocated for money over human life.
Wow. Going to play the race/bigotry card, too, eh?
I have never indicated a “fear of change.”
The “change” you propose will not lead to a “more civilized country”. I oppose the “change” you propose, because it does nothing other than exert tyrannical state control over individual liberty.
Your continued lack of civil discourse, of responding on-topic to arguments, and ad nauseum use of ad hominem say otherwise. You are either incapable, or afraid, of civil debate.
“You have said this repeatedly in your own posts on this subject and stated again and again ‘the body count can never be too high.’ ”
No, that wasn’t him. That was me. My rights don’t end because others abuse the freedom given to them, no matter how badly they abuse them. If you believed in freedom, free will, or this Country, you would believe that way too.
But, as Chip has repeatedly gotten you to prove, you believe in using the state to execute violence against those you disagree with. Which means you don’t believe in freedom. Which is funny, because if you aren’t one of those in power, calling the shots, you are a pawn for those that do. Same as all the leftists on college campuses, protesting and fighting with those exercising their freedom and even law enforcement (which is hypocritical, but you don’t understand), while those in power that goaded them into making fools of themselves, potentially criminals, sit in their offices and reap the benefits of sowing discontent among the masses.
Go ahead, keep blindly following the lies. Keep buying into the narrative that espouses tolerance and acceptance, but uses intimidation and violence. Maybe one day you’ll see that the “right” is much more tolerant, civil, and rational than the “left”. i doubt it, but everyone deserves a second chance.
To Chips in the head.
Quote———————
You have said this repeatedly in your own posts on this subject and stated again and again “the body count can never be too high”.
Provide a link to me stating that exact quote, or even anything remotely resembling that quote.
You are a liar.—————-quote
Well I now can really nail your lies to the wall now. Every time I have brought up a statistic citing dead people through gun violence you have consistently said the body count was “not that high” simply insinuating that you could not care less that “people are dying” and because you are a Psycho with no conscience then no solution to the problem (that I have or others have suggested) should be even tried . You have consistently stated such. In other words “who cares” let the bodies pile up”. Since you now have actually denied your multitudes of posts when arguing about body counts it simply proves that not only you are a liar to all who have read your posts but it also it proves you really do have the Psychopathic personality I have been pointing out to everyone. This is not being a troll in any sense of the word because I have simply pointed out the outrageous things you have said in your posts in regards to your total callousness for human life and total disregard for suggested solutions that many other people have proposed to help stem the carnage that goes on every day in the U.S. Solutions that have been tried and implemented in many other countries of the world all of which with a wave of the hand you dismiss because of your deranged personality and warped ideas of total freedom without responsibility and the irresponsibility to do not anything or nothing so as not to inconvenience you.
You continue to deny body counts as irrelevant. You stated such when you said the body count was not that high when speaking of guns that killed people that were stolen from gun stores. Now are you going to deny that also???????
You continue to deny success of prior or future gun laws both in the U.S. and in other countries.
You continue to deny the success of the Brady Bill and how expanding it to all gun purchases would not prevent the wrong people from buying guns when the history of the Brady Bill shows with “new guns”it has worked and of course with second hand guns would do the same. Only a lunatic like yourself would deny the History of the Brady Bill .
You continue to deny that vetting of full auto weapons and silencers had any effect on crime which is absurd.
quote——————There is no “vetting process” for automatic weapons. Fill out a tax form, pay a tax, and you can legally own one. The “vetting” is no different from any other firearm. The only difference is paying the tax.—————quote—————-
Wow!!!!! this is the most bizarre response you have ever made because you actually contradicted your self. Which is it vetting or no vetting for full auto weapons. You really flipped out making that statement.
Yes even though you deny it full auto weapons are indeed vetted and have been since the 1930’s. Try buying one after getting out of prison and see if they do not deny the purchase to you. Of course you will give some deranged response that this is not vetting. Wow, why am I even carrying on a conversation with you when you make such bizarre and untruthful claims. This is really over the top.
In other words: you can’t actually cite me saying anything like what you said. Noted.
Your continual misquoting of me, and mis-attributing quotes to me, does not prove that I am a liar. Keep trying.
Oh, it is very much being a troll, because you have nothing but logical fallacy. You use ad hominem, straw man arguments, non-sequitur, and specious claims, among others.
In repeated challenges to quote my actual words, you have completely failed to do so, every time.
Case in point:
I refuted your “total freedom without responsibility” canard in my last comment. You keep repeating it, because you have nothing else whatsoever.
Yes, I deny that I ever said that “body count” is “irrelevant”. Put up or shut up: quote me.
That’s because every gun control law ever implemented has utterly failed to achieve the purported societal good, namely: a reduction in violent crime committed against the law-abiding by violent criminals.
The data prove conclusively that the Brady Bill has been an abject failure in preventing violent criminals from obtaining firearms. The Brady Bill barely changed criminal behavior by a few percentage points, with the end result being “prohibited persons” still obtaining firearms, through essentially the same means they always did before the Brady Bill.
And only a fool would think that felons would willingly subject themselves to background checks for private firearms transfers.
There is no special vetting for automatic firearms or for suppressors (why are you still carrying on about suppressors, anyway?).
Try buying any firearm after getting out of prison. The purchase will be denied. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the firearm being an automatic or not. It is the very same NICS check as for any other firearm.
The only difference for automatic firearms is the tax that gets paid. A tax is… a tax, not a form of vetting.
Do you even have any clue whatsoever about what you’re talking about?
Quote—————-In other words: you can’t actually cite me saying anything like what you said. Noted.—————–Quote—————–
Wrong. You have consistently avoided the truth about the consequences of not vetting people in buying both new guns and that it would not work with second hand guns when every statistic ever taken on the Brady Bill has show it prevented and continues to prevented not hundreds but over the years thousands of people from buying guns that had records.
quote————————The data prove conclusively that the Brady Bill has been an abject failure in preventing violent criminals from obtaining firearms. The Brady Bill barely changed criminal behavior by a few percentage points, with the end result being “prohibited persons” still obtaining firearms, through essentially the same means they always did before the Brady Bill. And only a fool would think that felons would willingly subject themselves to background checks for private firearms transfers.—————-quote——————
I have to hand it to you as you are a very skillful liar. You avoid the fact that the Brady Bill does not vet second hand guns therefore it only stops new guns from being sold to criminals. Why don’t you quit lying to yourself because its only yourself that believes your propaganda.
You continue to claim that vetting second hand guns for sale would not save lives. The facts are that every civilized nation in the world does exactly that and considering the fact that the majority of gun owners are law abiding citizens and would obey the law which means that YES INDEED THE BRADY BILL WOULD WORK AS INTENDED AND PREVENT SECOND HAND GUNS FROM BEING SOLD TO CRIMINALS BECAUSE———the majority of citizens would obey the law and sell their second hand guns to gun dealers to be vetted. This would take tens of thousands of guns out of the hand of criminals making it very, very difficult for convicted felons or people with criminal records from getting guns. No, I do not mean to say any law works 100 per cent of the time BUT ITS A HELL OF A LOT BETTER THAN HANDING OVER TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SECOND HAND GUNS TO CRIMINALS AND NUT CASES. ALL OF THIS YOU HAVE CONSISTENTALY REJECTED AS INFRINGING ON WHAT YOU BELEIVE IS YOUR RIGHT TO ABSOUTE FREEDOM DESPITE THE MASS MURDERS THAT ARE BEING COMMITTED. NO sane person would question that you are not playing with a full deck of mental cards.
Quote————-There is no special vetting for automatic firearms or for suppressors (why are you still carrying on about suppressors, anyway?).————–quote
Now your trying to save face by changing your story. First it was not vetting for full auto now in the same breath you are saying no special vetting. I never said anything about special vetting, I said vetting period. Besides what n the hell is special vetting anyway, a back ground check is a back ground check. You have never once in your over the top arrogance ever admitted when you screwed up. I admitted when I made a mistake when I said the 29,000 figure was the deaths of children rather it was the total deaths of all ages. I admitted when I made a mistake. You have proven to save face you will go to any length of lies to prop up your fragile ego even when caught with your pants down.
quote——————-Try buying any firearm after getting out of prison. The purchase will be denied. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the firearm being an automatic or not. It is the very same NICS check as for any other firearm.——————-Quote
Again your a slick skillful liar squirming to try and save face. My original statement was about the 1930’s law of vetting of machine guns and silencers. The Brady Bill came decades later and your bizarre statement only made you look even more foolish. At the time of the 1930’s Law there was no Brady Bill and before the law anyone without paper work could and did walk in and buy a machine gun or silencer over the counter. People as late as 1967 were buying handguns over the counter in many states without any paper work or background check. I had several friends who bought hand guns when they were only 19 years old which at that time was against the law of the state I lived in at the time but without vetting of the purchase the gun dealers with a wink and a nod sold the hand guns to anyone who even looked like they were 21. This stopped with the 1968 gun control act as dealers then were under the thumb of the Feds who they feared. Again you would probably say the 1968 law not work because after all you just said the Brady Bill does not work either which is absolutely hogwash and laughable. How in the world you can with a straight face say the Brady Bill did not work in regards to the vetting of new gun sales proves that you are both a liar and a psychopath. The Stats are there by the page full. Even a mental midget could look them up. Government records prove this beyond any doubt but you claim that it is not so because you do not want to believe the truth. Only nut cases go that far.
Quote——————-Try buying any firearm after getting out of prison. The purchase will be denied. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the firearm being an automatic or not. It is the very same NICS check as for any other firearm.
The only difference for automatic firearms is the tax that gets paid. A tax is… a tax, not a form of vetting.———–quote——————–
Thanks for plagiarizing my former statement. That is exactly what I just said. Yes in the 1930’s the vetting system would have prevented a felon from buying a machine gun. And decades later the Brady Bill did the same thing for new gun purchases. Quite trying to confuse people on the time line. Its a slick ploy that is making you look like your grasping at straws while trying to save face. It is not working your making a fool of yourself. Just be man enough to admit you were wrong on vetting.
The tax on full auto weapons had nothing to do with the vetting rather it was meant to discourage the common man from buying a machine gun because back then $200 was a hell of a lot of money. Only the well to do, who by and large, usually did not buy them to go out and commit a crime because even if they had wanted to the serial number would have traced the gun back to them. It also prevented impulse buying because of the cost and the long wait for the paper work to be approved and the local Police Chief could still deny the purchase without even stating a reason other than that he thought no one should own such weapons of mass destruction.
I am really disappointed in you this time. At least in the past some of your statements would have fooled the less knowledgeable but even Donald Trump could follow these posts and realize you got in way over your head or maybe were 3 sheets in the wind when typing them. You did not even give me a challenge this time. Its so easy I am becoming bored with it all.
History has proven the vast majority of crimes are not done with full auto weapons and silencers these days even when $200 dollars is such a low amount people often spend that much money on a night out on the town rather it was the long paperwork wait through vetting that kept full auto weapons and silencers out of the hands of criminals who commit crimes. They use weapons that are easy to get, less costly and of course are not vetted that is exactly why they do not use machine guns but use second hand guns and stolen guns. Ditto for nut cases using semi-auto rifles instead of machine guns.
And as long as there are people like you around preventing safe storage laws, security alarm systems and vetting of all gun sales the criminals will have all the guns they could ever want and at discount prices because there are so many of them for sale on the black market. Which by the way does not concern you in the least as if it did you would not be arguing about “body counts” not being that bad. If the body count was 600 this week you would say “do not worry it was only 599” so why worry about it and I won’t because I live in another area anyway. That is no solution to the problem.
And you keep harping on putting more people in jail. The U.S. has one of, if not the highest, prison populations in the world compared to its population size and its crime rate with guns is one of the highest so putting more people in prison is a joke and the Stats have proved it for years. Nixon’s war on crime was failure as well as they started putting people in prison with the 3 strikes and your out plan for as little as stealing a $1.00 VCR tape and then spending 20 years in prison at taxpayers expense and the high tech world changed so fast that many had no knowledge of even how to use a computer and apply for a job thereby guaranteeing they were headed for another life of crime with no job. I am not implying dangerous murders should not be in prison but towing the ignorant “hillbilly line” calling for simplistic solutions to complex problems has proven an absolute failure. It takes many ways to reduce crime including providing decent “livable wages”, “free job training”, better education and better global competition for cutting down on young men resorting to a life of crime and drugs, not the idiotic racist Jeff Sessions philosophy of the Jack Booted Storm Troopers taking peoples property on mere unproved suspicion of a crime which most States by the way have outlawed because of so many unjust seizures
For people like you the simplistic Nazi solution of prison or a bullet in the head solves all problems including jay walking has not worked in the past and will not work in todays civilized societies.
And I might add another way that shows the Brady Bill worked is that the amount of new guns used by the criminals is minuscule compared to the guns that are used that are second hand and stolen. Again refuting your bizarre claim the Brady Bill does not work. Remember we are talking about new guns because the Brady Bill does not vet second hand sales as it should. Tell the truth and quite lying between your teeth about the Brady Bill and what it has done and could do. The Cops have stated publically many times the majority of guns that are used in crimes are funneled into states with tough gun laws from States that have weak laws. Its that simple and I am sure you will say this is Fake News because anything that proves you wrong is a blow to your fragile ego preventing you from admitting the truth to your self but your are not fooling anyone else. The Stats are there and as a sane Statist I do not hide from the truth or engage in bizarre rants denying it as you do.
Cisco,
Where is the outrage for all the events like this that we read about? http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/20/teens-filmed-mocked-and-laughed-while-man-slowly-drowned.html
You have no comprehension whatsoever that youth like those that watched a man slowly die in front of them, have little concern about following any sort of societal norms, let alone laws, and that is why violence in the inner cities is THE driver for violence numbers in this Country.
You want to blame guns, I’m blaming you for not having any concern about the welfare of these families until after harm is done. It is liberal policies (to include gun control) that have led to a society where many have zero concern for others. You can take away the gun, but that doesn’t take away lack of concern for life.
To Dy,
Read my above post, the one just above yours. Maybe you will learn something in regards to crime and why it happens and why Nixon’s war on crime and locking everyone up was a totally failure.
I don’t see where you offer solutions to failed liberal policies that have destroyed hope for the inner cities.
If we drove down inner city crime even 10%, the difference to the US crime rate would be exponential. You realize without the major cesspools counted (Chicago, etc) our crime rate is below those of other western nations? There is an inner city violence problem. If it was guns, then the problem would be as pronounced outside the inner cities, in places where you can more easily acquire firearms.
Prosecution of federal gun laws were absolutely miserable under Obama. Wouldn’t you like to see already existent laws used to prosecute gun criminals? I think you assume that anyone that opposes you thinks full prisons are the solution. I do not. The problem is not guns, and the problem is not locking enough people up. There may be some middle ground in getting the habitual offenders off the street (which means violence in general, like youth that commit robbery and assault many times before they finally murder someone), but that MUST be coupled with solutions aimed at giving these kids a reason not to go out and live a life of crime.
Is there and can there be racism? Absolutely. There are bad people of every color, creed, sex, you name it. If you think independently, long enough to forget the BLM/liberal lies, you will find that FBI/DOJ crime data clearly shows that Asians and Hispanics are represented to nowhere near the level of Blacks, in any category. As a matter of fact, the “racist” numbers actually show that whites have a much higher chance of being assaulted because of skin color, by blacks, than blacks do from whites or any other ethnicity. I use the FBI/DOJ numbers because although not 100% (due to reporting or lack of reporting in various jurisdictions), they are considered by most to be as close to the truth as you can get. Neither side is going to have a 100% solution to numbers, because every reporting mechanism has it’s failings. But when the numbers are as skewed as they are, the likelihood of them being THAT wrong, is very small.
To DY
Your totally ignoring the “root causes of crime” which are unemployment, poverty, lack of jobs skills because of a lack of training and education.
Nixon’s War on Crime was a total failure proved locking everyone up did not reduce crime or addiction to drugs, as a matter of fact it actually increased addiction to drugs because of lack of treatment centers and the criminalization of drugs rather than treating it as a medical problem which it is. In advanced European countries drug addition is under much better control because people do not get locked up for being addicted but are given “free treatment” to save their lives as well as get them off of drugs. Lets face facts when you give drugs for free to people you run the drug gangs out of business very fast as no one will pay for drugs when they get them free from the government. Contrary to popular hill jack belief most people on drugs want off of them.
Today Neanderthals like the Racist Nut Case Jeff Sessions has embarked on a reign of terror campaign to even lock people up who smoke weed and confiscate peoples private property if they are only under suspicion of committing a crime. This has not happened since Nixon’s war on crime or the Nazi reign of terror in 1930’s Germany. Do you even realize that under Herr Hauptman Jeff Sessions if you are stopped at a traffic stop and any of your money has the slightest trace of a controlled substance on it from a previous owner of the money that you will lose everything you own instantly and probably never get it back for decades if you ever get it back?
You also ignore the fact that the NRA became the criminals best friend when it deliberately gutted the Brady Bill when it was passed by not vetting second hand gun sales. The criminals will always have a plethora of second hand guns to buy faster than they can buy a hamburger. Despite our totally deranged friend Chips in the Head the facts are that most gun owners are law abiding citizens, I think we both know that, so if second hand guns were vetted with an update of the Brady Bill the bulk of second hand gun sales would be vetted thereby denying tens of thousands of sales to the street punk and convicted felons , the wife beaters, the petty criminals and the nut cases all of which cause crime and should not have guns. I think any reasonable sane person excluding Chips in the Head would agree with sanity over complete wholesale murder and mayhem by providing every criminal and nut case with all the guns they need and at bargain basement prices.
I’m not ignoring the root causes of crime. I’m accusing you of that, is that unfair? Crime, in this case committed with guns, is a symptom, not the cause. You are suggesting that individuals who are not criminals pay a price for the acts of criminals, and that we shift more resources towards making firearms ownership more difficult.
I’m glad we are past the name calling (we are, right?) and can have a civil discussion. While your talk of Sessions and others is inflammatory, it’s not hurting my feelings.
You should probably find out what people think about topics before either assuming they don’t know, or don’t agree with you. Like I said previously…like many other topics (abortion, social programs, etc) ultimately neither side is going to agree 100%. But reform, refinement, and new thinking about problems SHOULD be part of our process, and civil discourse is the only way to get there, without one side or the other (assuming two party political system as we generally have now) being trampled and feeling neglected.
I do not agree with ANY civil asset forfeiture. I don’t agree with eminent domain. I don’t agree with the way our prison system currently works. I don’t agree with our drug laws, at least at the Federal level. I do not blindly line up with one political party or another. You and I can probably come to agreement on at least a portion of each of those topics, if not completely. We would be far more productive if we find where we have common ground, and figure out how to make changes that make things better.
Now on the gun thing. Let me break it down to the lowest common denominator, the individual. You don’t know me, but I’m not a criminal. There is nothing in my past, present, or foreseeable future to indicate that I’m going to commit criminal acts, especially violent ones. With that said, why should my right to own a firearm be restricted, taxed, or otherwise infringed upon? How about everyone else that falls into the same category as I do? Shouldn’t they be afforded the same freedom? As far as you know, I’m not a threat to you, I’ve done and will do nothing to infringe on your rights (or any other generally law abiding citizen). Agreed? That’s the root of my argument on this topic. I completely understand that guns in the wrong hands are part of a large problem in this Country, but I also understand that gun laws generally target largely black, inner-city citizens, and making me or anyone else pay (whether it be time or money) to exercise a right is not how things should be. I do not like bringing cost to the table, because if you are even halfway well off, each tax is easily accommodated. but that is and should be a factor when applied to our entire population. Otherwise the “1%’s” will always be able to exercise their rights more freely than anyone else, which is not what our Country is about.
Understanding that we cannot predict the future, and that we hope everyone is compassionate about their fellow Americans, I presume that neither you nor I want innocent lives hurt, ruined, or destroyed through violence, by any means. Obviously stopping that from happening is impossible, but perhaps we can make it happen less, right? Without a consensus though, nothing will happen to make things better.
Now…accusing people you disagree with of being nutjobs, racists, and/or criminals best friends is not how you gain consensus. It quickly shuts those of us down who do not wish to engage in discussions that are ultimately going to prove unproductive, and it happens very often. Whether you agree with him or not, Chip has not called you names as far as I can tell. Is it too much to ask that you don’t do the same, so that you can actually have a discussion? At the same time, all of us need to be open to facts, assumptions, and beliefs that we may not agree with or believe in, but at least try and understand where the other person is coming from.
Back to the topic at hand…given that you and I will not agree on guns in general, say you are the Senate, I the House, and we have a President that will sign anything you and I agree on. I would say additional restrictions on guns that involve registration, cost, or time of a lawful citizen are non-starters for me. That probably throws out a large chunk of what you believe. But, why don’t we discuss mental health care and inner-city violence? Let’s not talk about mass incarceration, let’s talk about reform. Let’s talk about how we can get people mental health treatment. Let’s talk about how we get inner city violence to decrease. Don’t you think we could come up with some productive solutions that get at what both of us want?
Quote——————-I’m not ignoring the root causes of crime. I’m accusing you of that. Am I wrong? Crime, in this case committed with guns, is a symptom, not the cause. You are suggesting that individuals who are not criminals pay a price for the acts of criminals, and that we shift more resources towards making firearms ownership more difficult. ————–quote
Yes that is exactly what you are doing your ignoring the root causes of crime and ignoring the fact that the Nixon “lock everyone up” was an unmitigated human disaster”. It gave judges no leeway to look at every situation as unique and rule according to the circumstances. The 3 strikes and your out nonsense, as documented recently by NPR, resulted in people going to prison at our expense often for 20 years for crimes to minor (like stealing a $1 VCR tape) that is surpassed all previous judicial insanity.
Crime has gotten worse over the years because the under-employment situation in the U.S. and lack of a civilized “livable wage” as advocated by Bernie Sanders and adopted by every other civilized nation on earth has now resulted in 50 per cent of the U.S. population unable to live on an average annual wage of less than $30,000 dollars. You can rant all you want at having a jack booted Nazi Thug run government under nut cases like Herr Hauptman Jeff Sessions but history has already proven this imbecile wrong a dozen times over.
Also I am not advocating making guns harder to get at all. The Brady Bill has proved it did not make guns harder to get or confiscate guns at all. What is the big deal on extending it to cover all gun purchases? What I am doing is trying to keep tens of thousands of second hand guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics. I fail to see why you cannot see this. Every civilized nation in the world (of which the U.S. is not a part of) vets all gun purchases and they have been doing it for decades. In Germany gun ownership and shooting clubs are very numerous but their gun crime is way lower. Have you ever wondered why? Its because they thoroughly vet everyone who buys a gun. That’s only common sense not rocket science, or not a Commie conspiracy at all. Its what civilized nations do to prevent crime.
See, this is where I’m saying we can have a productive conversation without getting nasty or completely disagreeing, except when you go the nazi route, which is pretty low brow. I can call you a racist, that doesn’t mean you need to defend yourself. It’s why we have courts, and burden of proof is on the accuser. For someone who apparently dislikes Trump, you use similar techniques in communication.
I’m torn on things like three strikes…do you disagree that in certain cases, maybe individuals with multiple DUI’s should go away forever BEFORE they kill someone instead of after? Pedophiles? Gun crimes? I understand the mentality behind three strikes, but I agree that zero tolerance as applied to most things is a disaster waiting to happen, and the benefit of the doubt should always go to those accused. Three strikes is a zero tolerance policy, zero tolerance for sentencing leeway. There are bad judges, but there are bad people in every profession, we have to accept that bad decisions are going to happen, and there will be repercussions from those decisions.
Are you citing what you think is fact, or just trying to make a point? Because crime in general, particularly violent crime, has gone WAY down over time, and is lower the last few years than it had been in decades. I’m not using that as a way to say your thinking is wrong or right, only that it is fact. There are spikes, and there are regions where things have gotten worse (Chicago is one I believe) but overall crime is not worse. Heck, I was startled to find that child abductions were worse in the 1970’s than they are today. BTW, I listen to NPR as well, I just don’t trust them completely, as with any media source. 🙂
You are inaccurate comparing the US to any foreign country for any meaningful statistics. Comparatively, the rest of the “West” (heck, the “East”/Asia as well is less integrated than we are, and have been very stable populations for long periods of time…no immigrants, little/no slavery, shared religion, etc. We don’t have that here, which is why our divisions are as deep as they are. Not that they can’t be worked through, but we are a different society. Japan doesn’t have guns, but their suicide rate is higher than ours. Swedens rape rate (and I’m not talking about blaming immigrants) is higher than the rest of Europe. Point being, each population is different. Have you been to Europe? You don’t see homeless (non-migrants anyway, I was there before that) anywhere I was in Europe, like you do here. And it has nothing to do with their wages (been to Eastern Europe??). Maybe some to do with social programs regarding care, but the family is much more important in most other societies than it is here, and there is apparently a much deeper work ethic. That is not a function of the government. Please don’t waste time trying to compare us to other “civilized” nations further. I like Europe, but it is a sterile environment, and if that is what I wanted, I would move there. Yes, some things I like better there than here, but I prefer our bill of rights. We should focus on our population, and our specific problems. It never hurts to observe and see if things will work that others have done, but it is disingenuous to imply that what works somewhere else will work with here.
I understand what you want to do. You want to make things better. So do I. What I am trying to get you to see is that I will oppose your efforts just as vigorously as you oppose me on that broad topic, because I disagree fundamentally with what you believe the US should be, and that isn’t likely at all to change, probably for either of us. I do not trust the government implicitly (while it does have it’s place and does SOME things correctly). I think if you could provide an anonymous, free background check system, you’d have a hard time finding gun owners who would oppose that. But you can’t. For states that have implemented mandatory background checks, some track ownership (which is against federal law BTW), and they cost money, both to the buyer and to society at large because there are administrative and enforcement costs, if anyone actually chooses to prosecute the few idiots that try and purchase illegally. If you believe the 2A is at least some semblance of a right, you should believe that it, just like any other right, should not be subject to how much money you have. If the majority of crime guns are stolen, or transferred from criminal to criminal (which is fact) then why are you focused on background checks, since they cannot prevent that?
You and I understand differently about mental health. Any cuts that were done were done at the state level. States ran mental institutions, but were eventually given free reign to spend the money how they saw fit…and they took it out of mental health.
If you think wealth and power is concentrated on the right, you are sorely mistaken. Soros, Bloomberg, Gates, Allen, need I go on? Like I said, I do not align with either side clearly. There is far too much wrong with each sides platform to do so as a rational, critically thinking person. Zero tolerance for anything the other side believes.
To DY
quote————————You are inaccurate comparing the US to any foreign country for any meaningful statistics.“East”/Asia as well is less integrated than we are, and have been very stable populations for long periods of time…no immigrants, little/no slavery, shared religion,-We don’t have that here, which is why our divisions are as deep as they are. ———————–Quote
No I am not inaccurate at all as statistics show that even when you take into consideration the population differences foreign countries like Europe and Japan have way less firearms theft and homicides because of the gun laws they have had on the books for decades. They work and history has proven it beyond any doubt. No laws are fool proof but to have none would be and is the height of complete insanity. The recent death of the White Australian Woman brings to mind something she said before she was gunned down by a cop. She said she feared living here because compared to Australia the U.S. was a violent place with guns everywhere and unfortunately what she feared the most happened because she was killed by a gun by an untrained cop or one that should have been vetted with a psychological test as most police get in European countries on a periodic basis to weed out cops that have “gone over the edge” due to delayed stress syndrome. As you can see resisting change means we will never make America a civilized country to live in as is enjoyed by many advanced European Countries and we have to start one step at a time by studying what has worked for other countries.
I would suggest you start watching foreign news channels so you become more educated about Asia. No they have never had stable populations. That’s another long story but Koreans have migrated to both Japan and China and so have Philippians as well as Asians from Indonesia. And there is plenty of slavery to this very day both domestic slavery of immigrants to China as well as sex slavery as well. And no they do not share a common religion. I see you never heard of Taoism, Shintoism, two types of Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and yes Christianity is found there as well as about 70 million Christians practice in China as last reported very recently and no they are not persecuted either.
Quote————- Japan doesn’t have guns—————-Quote—————–
Again you need to start watching foreign news channels. The Japanese do indeed have plenty of civilian ownership of shotguns and even rifles. I recently watched a show about an American who lives in Japan and he explained step by step how he acquired both. They do require psychological testing and safe storage of guns in a safe and security alarm systems much as Western Europe does. And despite this firearms ownership they are not knee deep in blood and bullets as we are. Vetting of all gun purchases as well as the above mentioned requirements cut way down on crime with guns.
quote———————– Because crime in general, particularly violent crime, has gone WAY down over time, and is lower the last few years than it had been in decades.————————quote
True it is down but not dramatically and there are many reasons for it, the major one being the population of the U.S. is an aged population. When I was abroad in an East European Country I was amazed at the difference in the amount of young people there as opposed to the U.S. This is one of the major factors in less crime. This does not mean we should ignore the fact that the U.S. still has one of the highest gun crime rates in the world, only some South American countries that are run by drug lords are as bad as we are. Which has been my point all along. Unlike Chips in the Head that is always stating that if the statistics are a few less than he would like to think that all these deaths are acceptable, they are not in a civilized society especially that of children and again especially when it is so easy to do something about it and we do not because the oppositions real reason for resistance to change is that they do not want to spend a few pennies or just do not want to be inconvenienced or held responsible for unnecessary deaths do to their refusal for safe storage.
quote——————– I think if you could provide an anonymous, free background check system, you’d have a hard time finding gun owners who would oppose that. But you can’t. For states that have implemented mandatory background checks, some track ownership (which is against federal law BTW), and they cost money, both to the buyer and to society at large because there are administrative and enforcement costs, if anyone actually chooses to prosecute the few idiots that try and purchase illegally. If you believe the 2A is at least some semblance of a right, you should believe that it, just like any other right, should not be subject to how much money you have. If the majority of crime guns are stolen, or transferred from criminal to criminal (which is fact) then why are you focused on background checks, since they cannot prevent that? —————-quote
History has shown you wrong again. The Brady Bill has been in place for decades and to date has not confiscated any guns nor has it made it expensive to buy one at all so again I ask you what is the big deal to just vet all gun purchases. Again you mention stolen guns and even if we let you ignore all the second hand guns that end up in criminal hands the safe storage laws and security alarms systems you oppose would cut down , way down on theft of guns but too many gun owners claim the dead body count can never be too high because they do not want to spend a penny on prevention and they end up cutting their own throats not once but twice. In the first instance they lose their entire gun collections to theft which can amount to thousands of dollars and in the second instance more sensational crimes with stolen guns especially mass shootings results in pressure on politicians to start banning certain types of guns. Again gun owners are often their own worst enemies.
The last point is in response to your claiming that vetting will result in confiscation. First the Brady Bill vetting has been on the books for decades and not one gun has been confiscated and even if the Brady Bill did not exist if the Government wanted to ban guns it does not need to know if you have one and if you do have them it does you no good even if no one knows you have them because if you would fail to turn them in you would not only lose your freedom for years but you would lose all of your wealth as well because that would also be confiscated by the Government. Now lets come down to earth and talk sanity, not many people who have a family and a job and children and a house would even dare risk losing it all over ownership of a banned gun. That’s cold hard reality so claiming lack of vetting somehow would save your gun ownership if a new law was suddenly passed is pure nonsense.
I might add the government already knows you do indeed have guns as the civilian illegal surveillance on us all tells them that if you subscribed to a gun magazine or just bought one at the store on your credit card or bought a box of ammo at Walmart on your credit card or if you belong to a shooting range or a gun club or the NRA or donated money to the NRA or Second Amendment foundation or any other gun organization you are pegged as a gun owner by the government. And how about if you ever went to a gun show. The feds were caught not to many years ago photographing the license plate numbers of every car in a parking lot at a big major gun show. You see your fantasy about being a hidden or anonymous gun owner is nothing but pure fantasy that is only believed by the ignorant far right. Your privacy does not exist in the 21st Century and remember too your are photographed hundreds of times a day by security cameras and even if you walked into Wal-Mart and paid cash instead of using a credit card for a box of ammo or even a cleaning kit, guess what, the Government knows you did. When Chips in the head rants about being a modern day Minute Man ready to defend the second amendment any government guy watching this forum that we are all hanging out on is laughing his ass off at Chip as he already knows we all have guns and because of Chips Minute Man comments he would be first on the government hit list. Right now poor Chip, if he is reading this has budging eyes, a quivering body, and he is undoubtedly gulping down handful’s of Prosaic. Yep the jig is up because we cannot get away with breaking the law and keeping any guns that are banned so we in reality have everything to gain with vetting and nothing to lose at all because less crime and less sensational mass murders means less call to ban everything. Now that is what really makes more sense.
to Dy
And you mentioned mental health care. Do you know its been the Republicans as far back as Reagan that not only shut down mental institutions but then provided no money so people could get affordable mental health care and they are now advocating even taking what little gains in coverage we got under Obama care away from us altogether. They even are now considering doing away with Medicare as well as medicade. Their voucher program is an insult to our intelligence and to humanity as the voucher would have a few pennies in it and after the money was gone you go bankrupt.
Yes the gun violence problem has been laid right at the feet of the Republicans who have failed to pass laws to vet all gun purchases, require safes and require security alarm systems and their skin tight stinginess for failing to provide affordable mental health care as well. All this would have been included in the original Obama single payer plan but they sabotaged it by refusing to pass his bill if this was in it as it would have cut down on their greed monger profits from the drug companies and insurance companies in which they are heavily invested in. Do you know the crook Herr Trump appointed to Human Health and Services made 300 million in profit after he succeeding in a rule change to the Insurance companies so they could rape us even more than they had been doing?
A public agent, working for a public agency (a cop) shoots an innocent Australian woman. Philandro Castille is shot sitting in his car by a cop. There are many more, you yourself have cited some of them. Yet you say we should trust the government to not get things wrong when it comes to guns. That is an illogical viewpoint.
Your comparison of other countries does not take into account per capita gun ownership, thus is invalid comparison, even if I was going to give you the opportunity to compare completely different societies, but I’m not. I assume Saudi Arabia has pretty “lax” firearms laws, if you really want to go down that road. Iraq and Syria probably do not, but lets just ignore all the ones that don’t fit our model, right? Mexico? You ignore statistics that prove different cultures have different rates of different crimes and activities when it suits your argument, but that’s mental laziness. Real easy to cherry pick. That would be like saying guns are the cause of crime in the US and ignoring everything else we know what is true, and not doing anything about those because it isn’t necessary in other Countries.
Sorry, but I’m done here. You don’t actually care about the minorities or the impoverished, you wish to sever their rights because “it’s not that tough” or it’s “not that expensive” to comply with rules that infringe on their rights just as much as they do Bloombergs. I assume then, that you have no problem with voter ID laws, because those aren’t that hard or expensive to comply with either. Intellectual dishonesty.
You are spinning your wheels here, or most likely anywhere. Unfortunately yours is not just one voice against anti-freedom, there are far too many of you. I, and all the rest of us that love our freedom and this Country, can only hope that the Supreme Court saves the Constitution from those who advocate it’s application only to those who can afford to pay the government what they demand. Gorsuch was a step, and when/if we get pro-freedom decisions, anti-minority and anti-poor advocates will be hurting.
to dy
Now you have gone full blown chips in the head nuts. You admit your too cheap to agree to safe storage and security alarms or be inconvenienced to take a 1 or 2 minute vet for second hand guns like you do for new ones. You have proven you are just like chips in the head. The body count is never too high to inconvenience you or for you to act as a responsible person and prevent crime by the above simple methods none of which prevents any law abiding citizen from owning a gun and never has.
You keep dodging the truth with long illogical rants that have nothing to do with the fact that the Brady bill never has infringed on your freedom not now and not back then and would not if it covered second hand guns. You have consistently denied this or simply dodged the question
Ok I am going to put it right in front of your face. Tell me how the Brady bill infringes on your rights and how your rights trump the lives of other people. You won’t respond because there is no logical response that you can make that says the Brady Bill does infringe on your right to buy a gun none, nada, zelch. Your wrong and you know your wrong and only a nut case would deny this.
No you do not have unlimited freedom to cause the deaths of innocent people due to your irresponsibility and being to cheap and stingy to obey common sense laws in place in every civilized country in the world. Denying that these laws worked in other countries and will also not work in ours simply because you want to avoid Historical truth is ridiculous. Guys like you cause all the death and destruction in this country and you are as guilty of causing this as the criminal that pulls the trigger because you and guys like you are putting the weapons and ammo right in the crooks hands and then looking the other way and saying, Its not my fault and the dead body count is really not that bad. You will not admit that by opposing the prevention of guns being sold to criminals you are as guilty as they are. Yea sure give us another Donald Trump political speech. Its no more honest than anything he as ever said or you have ever said.
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