Psychos can kill with knives too, so therefore gun control would be pointless.


There are occasional knife attacks in other countries too. Psychos will always be with us. But only here do we make sure it will be easy for them to be heavily armed.

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Thus far, the sales pitches haven't worked. The shaming/insulting technique doesn't work. There are tens of millions of Americans who you need to convince and many of them think if you ban military-style weapons, next you'll be after their handguns and hunting rifles. Calling them stupid won't advance your initiative, so how can you convince enough of those people that you won't be coming for those other guns?

impact though. Too many already out there and too many easy alternatives to do the same thing. On the other hand, I think even us gun owners can get through life just fine without them. If it stops even one of these tragedies because it was too difficult for the shooter to pick the weapon up illegally, great.

The only real catalyst I see for it though will be more of these incidents on even a larger scale.

to convince people like this that we can ban military-type weapons and still protect their right to own hunting rifles and handguns. The people who currently try hardest and loudest to advance such a proposal do it in a very tone deaf, self-defeating way.

I think you can make a much stronger legal argument that pure hunting guns (and maybe even pure self-defense guns) are more bannable than militia style guns. There is significant overlap, to be sure. If a gun is good for a militia, it is often good for hunting, and vice versa. But the Founding Fathers weren't worried about hunting when they proposed the Bill of Rights.

and most of the guys are hunters. Some of them bird and duck hunt with me on our property as it’s pretty big and great for that type of thing. Good peeps even though most support Orange, distrust the govt, and think that an AW ban is simply a step to complete confiscation. They are not convincible on the subject. They are also likely right that it won’t make any significant difference. The suburbanites that are even slowly creeping in to our area in tract housing to all of our collective dismay are the convincibles.

The US banned assault weapons 1994-2004 (mass shootings decreased), and did not move beyond that, so maybe that would calm some.

But I think that success would probably be more likely by motivating those who, up to this point, don't care much about this, rather than convince NRA members to change their views.

Insulting them is a very dumb way of trying to persuade. As I see this more and more on this and other issues, it makes me question whether the people allegedly trying to persuade are really that interested in change or if they're just interested in emoting, because it's clear that these tactics are ineffective.

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Do you think your 2nd Amendment rights are different? If so, why?

I can’t buy a military assault rifle. Neither can you, at least legally.

Well you actually could buy an automatic weapon if it was manufactured prior to 1986. It would have to be one registered with the BATF in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Records. You would have to find an FFL dealer who has gone through additional background checks and paid additional fees. These are called Class 3 FFL dealers and they go through extensive investigation by the ATF.

Then if you find the automatic assault weapon you want, you have to pay a $200 tax and register a 12 page application, submitting fingerprints and photos to the ATF. Good luck getting approval but you can certainly try. The average wait time for approval, if you get it, is nine months. Your name and address will be registered with your local police and if you want to cross state lines with your new purchase you will have to apply for permission.

Frankly, I'm skeptical of new gun control legislation and, additionally, I believe in the necessity of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens as a means of self-defense. In fact, I suspect that probably too few people in that category in our our cities own them.

Where I think many of the pro-gun folks get things wrong is automatically assuming that anyone who supports the restrictions you mention wants to go after other weapons, along with the very misinformed belief that the Framers inserted the 2nd Amendment to give the people the right to protect the people against Leviathan. That was not the intention of the 2nd Amendment, whatsoever. It was actually the opposite. On the heels of rabble-rousers threatening state governments, it was necessary to protect the right of firearm ownership such that when it happened again, the government could call up militias that could put down those rabble-rousers.

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Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq4vPgyRQY8

who will try to confiscate my guns. In fact some of the Dems running right now want gun confiscation of all semi-automatic weapons. Some probably couch it in “mandatory buy back” terms.

You don't have to convince me that this issue is one of the issues that prevents the party from being viable in many rural areas. It's assumed that every Dem candidate supports new gun legislation, even one some Dem candidates do not.

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I would guess 99% of them don’t even know what they are or when they were enacted.

You are not taking my guns (which have never gotten loose and killed anyone or anything).

Since you won't pay to lock up these psychopaths in the unfortunately non-existant treatrment facilities and keep them away from decent people, you want to take my guns instead.

Chavez & Meduro took away guns from Venezuela citizens and gave them to their private murder squads. Do you think Bernie Sanders would do anything different as President if it were not for that inconvenient little thing we call our Constitution?

As Feinstein, herself, acknowledges, the assault weapons ban would only address one part of the nation’s broader crisis of gun violence. As Vox noted in an article last year, “Shootings with rifles, including assault rifles, make up less than 3 percent of gun homicides” in the United States, while handguns represent more than 70 percent of the firearms used in homicides.

A new study published in March found that the three state laws that were most effective at reducing gun deaths were universal background check requirements, prohibitions on violent offenders purchasing guns, and restricting concealed carry permits.

An AW ban, not so much. Restricting magazine size is also a good thing though.

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For example, the "Colt AR-15" was rebranded the "Colt Sporter." Do you think mass shooters wouldn't buy a sporter because it had a different name? Or because it didn't have a bayonet lug and a flash suppressor? Or because it used a thumbhole instead of a pistol grip? Or because the stock was static instead of collapsible? The '94 law was pure cosmetics, making people feel like something was banned when in actually nothing really was. When push came to shove, the gunbanners realized that assault weapons operated just like "hunting rifles," so they resorted to making them look different. If shootings were down, it was pure coincidence.

Here is an image of some of the changes required to continue selling the AR-15, er, I mean the Sporter. Notice the missing bayonet lug and the missing flash suppressor. Yes sir, that ban did its job. No way you can kill a bunch of people with that second rifle.

Studies in the link below.

Might have been part of a cycle. We don't know. But while a ban today would have no short-term impact, it might help in the long run.


Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

Why ban them if they don't?

Causality is hard to prove. But they did.

I'll say it again: Banning them would certainly bring down casualties in the long-run. Which gun owners don't really care about.

And, since I've already demonstrated that the AW ban was cosmetic only, and you have offered no reason by cosmetic bans would change the numbers of killings, there is no reason to believe that the AW ban had any effect whatsoever.

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