Mass Shooting Las Vegas...

[rogue06]

Not great, but better that than being wholly defenseless. Firing a gun is not exactly difficult.

It is so easy that too many think that they don't need no steenkin' firearm safety course when they get their first firearm.

[firstfloor]

And yet over 100 million people a year manage not to use these ‘hate amplifiers‘ for all that much hate amplification. The only thing I’ve been able to amplify is bragging rights if I can get a higher score at the range than whoever we happen to go with. Are we just using them wrong for this hate amplification to take place?

There is nothing wrong with sport shooting. I have shot a few clays myself; missed a lot more. You just don’t need to have those things at home. It’s uncivilised like wearing a hat indoors.

[rogue06]

Yes they are.

Machine Guns Are Legal: A Practical Guide to Full Auto
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...ide-full-auto/

So are bazookas:

https://www.atf.gov/file/55446/download

Back in the late 80s-early 90s I actually made a "bazooka." Pretty darn easy to do. Of course making or obtaining military grade rockets for it is a bit trickier.

[Mountain Man]

The bolded section is the point. Every time I've seen someone on various news and talking head shows calling for new and tougher gun control laws the past week and a half get asked what sort of law do they propose that would stop these short of killings they either go silent or change the topic. Every. Single. Time.

Only because what they really want to do is strike the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution and confiscate all firearms, but they will never openly admit it.

[Zymologist]

Just for the record, I don't support gun control on a safety only basis. I support regulation of dangerous weapons and dangerous modes of transportation.

Since cars are already regulated, I'm not seeing the objection here. My point is that I'm not convinced that 'responsible gun owners' exist in the wild - never seen one. But I concede the probability that they do exist enough that I do not support gun abolition.

If I were basing it solely on the idiots I have seen, I'd support global gun abolition... Something about guns makes otherwise sane individuals totally lose their common sense.

Calling every gun owner irresponsible/stupid/insane is a Starlight-level thing to do, IMO (yay dismissal!). From a common-sense perspective it seems obviously false anyway; there are something like 300 million guns in the US, and you seriously don't believe in responsible gun owners? Maybe you just have crap friends.

[kiwimac]

Many nations license gun-owners. People must study how to keep the firearms safe, they must train using the firearm and then pass a test. This helps keeps firearms under control.

[Adrift]

The bolded section is the point. Every time I've seen someone on various news and talking head shows calling for new and tougher gun control laws the past week and a half get asked what sort of law do they propose that would stop these short of killings they either go silent or change the topic. Every. Single. Time.

Here's a video by Vox that compiles a number of the most popular statistics together, and points out that most of the other 1st world nations where guns are legal have much tougher laws concerning acquiring and keeping guns including that you need:

1.) A license
2.) A recording into an official registry
3.) To acquire a license you need to state a reason for ownership
4.) In most countries you must pass a safety test
5.) And are required by law to store the gun safely

Regardless of your thoughts on Vox itself, I think it makes a pretty compelling case, and as far as I can tell, balanced argument. It mentions things like Switzerland's gun ownership laws, and the issues that they themselves have seen with so many freely available guns.

[Adrift]

Calling every gun owner irresponsible/stupid/insane is a Starlight-level thing to do, IMO (yay dismissal!). From a common-sense perspective it seems obviously false anyway; there are something like 300 million guns in the US, and you seriously don't believe in responsible gun owners? Maybe you just have crap friends.

As I understand her, that's not quite what she's saying. First of all, she's saying that there's no such thing as a safe gun, therefore, responsible gun ownership should not be considered a given. Every gun should be considered loaded and dangerous. Even an unloaded gun. We were taught in the military, and in my time in Security Forces (basically a base cop, though I mostly worked in the nuke field) that you treat every gun as though it were loaded and has a hair-trigger. We carried these weapons (in my case, an M9 Beretta, an M16A2, and an M60 Machine Gun) on us for 15 hour shifts, or longer. There were lots of times where we literally slept with our rifles an arms length away. They were highly dangerous weapons, and even in the severely controlled environment of the military, there were so so so many times I saw accidental firings. "Responsible gun ownership" does exist in as much as one can maintain that responsibility, and some people are much more responsible than others, but, though I think she's exaggerating when she claims that she's never seen it in the wild, I think her greater point is that it, again, can't be assumed. Even responsible gun owners have known to have accidents, or to have had irresponsible/ignorant people (including children) get unexpected access to them.

Secondly, when she refers to idiots, and otherwise sane people, she's not talking about all gun owners, she's talking about those people in her own personal experience who've stood out as being just that. There's absolutely no reason to knee-jerk to that description and assume she's referring to all gun owners everywhere, or to assume that she's making a Starlight-level argument. Let's give her a bit more credit than that. I realize that this is a very sensitive topic for people on both sides of the divide, but I can speak for myself, and I think Teal, when I say that we don't think gun owners are generally evil, or stupid people. To repeat what I said earlier in this thread, in my own personal experience, most gun owners are incredible individuals, who do treat their guns with the care that they merit.

[JimL]

Read the Constitution of the United States.

Why, does the Constitution, i.e. the authors thereof, determine what is a natural right, and what is not?

[Terraceth]

Why, does the Constitution, i.e. the authors thereof, determine what is a natural right, and what is not?

Trick question: It doesn't. It determines what legal rights there are. And the Constitution quite clearly establishes a legal right for guns that it does not establish for cars.

[One Bad Pig]

Here's a video by Vox that compiles a number of the most popular statistics together, and points out that most of the other 1st world nations where guns are legal have much tougher laws concerning acquiring and keeping guns including that you need:

1.) A license
2.) A recording into an official registry
3.) To acquire a license you need to state a reason for ownership
4.) In most countries you must pass a safety test
5.) And are required by law to store the gun safely

Regardless of your thoughts on Vox itself, I think it makes a pretty compelling case, and as far as I can tell, balanced argument. It mentions things like Switzerland's gun ownership laws, and the issues that they themselves have seen with so many freely available guns.

It is the second point which causes most people in the US to baulk. Registration makes them vastly easier to confiscate, by legal or criminal means ("Oops, the gun registration database was hacked....").

[Adrift]

Why, does the Constitution, i.e. the authors thereof, determine what is a natural right, and what is not?

I think that's a really good question. The Constitution isn't a divine writing. It was written by men. I think this leads into questions about what exactly are inalienable rights, is the right to a gun really a right to "property"? Is the right to property itself truly an inalienable right. And if the right to property is truly an inalienable right, why does the government make the right to the property ownership of guns inalienable, but not the right to, say, heroin, or anthrax, inalienable. This is all besides the point of who is authorized to determine what an inalienable right is. Is it a right derived from the Bible? From God? From all people, or only certain people? If the former, then why should a secular society care about rights derived from religion? Lots of questions to unpack there all in this one question.

[Adrift]

It is the second point which causes most people in the US to baulk. Registration makes them vastly easier to confiscate, by legal or criminal means ("Oops, the gun registration database was hacked....").

I guess my question then is, does it work in other first world nations? And if so, then why can it not work here? Cultural differences?

[Terraceth]

Your argument is that the very government that is infringing on the right is qualified to say that it isn't infringing on our right.

When Antonin Scalia, perhaps the most strongest pro-gun-rights justice that the country has ever had, says that there are still limitations to the Second Amendment, I consider that to be a very strong argument that there are in fact limitations to the Second Amendment.

I can't wait to see how your respond when that government decides that preachers can't speak out against homosexuality in the church like they did in Canada.

The Canadian courts made that decision based on the Canadian constitution, which is different than the United States constitution.

[Joel]

Trick question: [The Constitution] doesn't. It determines what legal rights there are. And the Constitution quite clearly establishes a legal right for guns that it does not establish for cars.

It doesn't even do that. That is made explicit in the 9th Amendment:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

I would also suggest that the 2nd Amendment does not establish the legal right, but presupposes its existence. It makes explicit what would have been implicit anyway.