I believe the US has done a very poor job on addressing this problem. There are many proposed ideas on what to do about the issue with guns, but the vast majority of them are not practical. In other words, the proposed solutions will not get accepted and/or get passed. I dont want this thread to be about what we should/shouldn't have if the suggested ideas will never get passed. This is not about mass shootings. This is about the massive amount of deaths resulting from guns. From children playing with guns, to suicides, to accidental discharges, homicides, ect ... Mainly I would like the pro-gun people to suggest ideas on how to deal with the gun issues we currently have. Questions for the pro-gun crowd: Do you feel we have a gun crisis in America? Specifically, do you feel there are too many people who illegally posses firearms? Do you feel there are too many people out there who can legally own a gun but (voluntarily) shouldn't have them. This can be for a wide variety of reasons, including undiagnosed mentally ill people, sheer incompetence, lack of training, ect ... Generally speaking, do you feel there is a lack of responsibility for gun ownership. Specifically, should gun owners be held more responsible for negligent behavior? To self-define myself, I am a moderate about gun control. Typically pro-gun people disagree with my solutions/proposals and I usually dont agree with solutions by the other side...mostly because they are not practical. My Suggestions: I believe America has a gun epidemic and too many people are addicted to their guns. I say this because the accessibility to guns is ridiculous. We shouldn't have gun stores on every block. I do agree guns are a right by definition of the 2nd amendment. However just because its a right does not mean it should be treated as a free market, supply and demand opportunity who's sole purpose is to turn a profit. That said, I believe guns should only be sold in gun shops only; No Walmart, No Sporting Good stores, no Pawn Shops or out of peoples basement. Gun shops selling online is fine. The idea is to stop the advertising and encouragement of purchasing guns and greatly reduce the places guns can be purchased. Gun owners should be held responsible for their weapons if they are negligent. One suggestion to help reduce this would be requiring a gun owner to own a certified safe capable of holding all of their weapons. If a gun owner ops not to own a safe, then they can be held liable if their gun gets stolen or other incidents should occur. The gun owner does NOT have to keep the guns in the safe. If more gun owners have safes, they are much more likely to use them. Strictly limit the amount of guns a person can sell/give as a private individual w/out having to go through an FFL. The FFL would charge a small consignment fee and run a back ground check. We already have some laws for this, but they are not really enforced, thus the whole gun show loop hole nonsense. The bottom line is there is no reason why a person should be churning weapons constantly w/out being considered a dealer or going through an FFL. Suggestions that are less likely to pass: Force all states to get on the same page when it comes to permits. Permits should be reciprocated between all states. All states should closely have the same laws. This means some states would have to relax their gun control measures and others would need to step it up. The permits should entail a demonstration of competency and knowledge of the laws. Current permits allow people to conceal carry and to carry in otherwise restricted gun zones. A permit would be required to own a semi-automatic weapon. Self Registration of all firearms. Basically this would be a small form someone fills out attesting ownership/responsibility of the gun. It would not be required to be filed. How its done is irrelevant. Failure to have a "paper" for a gun would be nothing more than a fine. While this seems pointless, the idea is to add further responsibility to gun owners and reprimand those who are less diligent of their weapons. Set a hard limit on how many guns a manufacture can produce, especially semi-automatic weapons. My theme is two pronged; Make gun owners more vigilant and to discourage the casual gun owner. There are some very responsible gun owners however there are too many very irresponsible and untrained gun owners. I have found people who are 'gun crazed' tend to be the safest and most responsible people, but yet most resistant to gun reform. On the other hand, I have found the 'casual' gun owner to be much more irresponsible. Owning a gun because its 'cool' is one of the worst reasons to own a gun. Sadly, unless one is a hunter, most people fall into this category. One can not claim their gun is for self defense if they rarely take it out to the gun range for target practice. Bottom line is we should allow people their right to exercise the right to the 2nd amendment but discourage owning guns for the sake of owning guns.
Only time they want gun control is when minorities want guns See Reagan and the Black Panthers Rocket River
Not really. Most gun homicides are criminals killing other criminals with a pistol. Often gangs and drugs are involved. We would probably solve more problems legalizing drugs than going after guns. I am fine with felon's being denied guns (though a mechanism by which their rights could be restored would be okay) but those laws already exist. Technically yes, in that I am sure there are a non-zero number of people that have guns but shouldn't, and one is too many. It isn't an issue I would focus on though. Generally this group isn't the problem. Generally speaking, I feel there is a lack of responsibility period. People should take responsibility for their own actions, and accept the consequences. There is nothing about guns specifically that I would be more focused on.
False. 60% of gun deaths in America are suicides. I applaud the OP's thread and will back out of it again -- I'm not the intended audience. I like hunting guns but am not a "pro gun" person in the American spectrum. Cheers all. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
I imagine it would be incredibly comforting that the vast majority of gun deaths are either suicides or criminals killing other criminals.....so I'm not sure what point you were really trying to make here. No one cares about suicides.
I was correcting a factual error for the benefit of the discussion. OP listed suicides as a problem. Another poster said incorrectly that most gun deaths were gang related. Just tried to offer some data that might help the conversation. (Odd concept, I know.) Looking forward to seeing your actual response to the OP instead of picking a fight with someone. But I won't hold my breath! Cheers. EDIT: I will sanitize my response especially for sensitive and easily triggered Fox subscribers. LOL.
Comprehensive gun control has been preacher for years 42-44 all seem to have felt the same way none wanted to take guns away just be smarter about whats being sold and what capacity of ammo being used.Deeper background checks
Well I would argue that even one person illegally possessing a firearm is too many, but I'm not sure I'd call it a "crisis" nationally. There are certainly areas in the country where the criminal activity has reached "crisis" levels, but that has less to do with guns, and more to do with criminality. For sure. I wouldn't trust the majority of people in this country with a potato cannon so yeah there's a lot of people who can and do legally own a gun but probably shouldn't. I'd need to know more about what you are talking about here. Do you mean that gun owners should be punished for having their guns stolen or for losing them? Do you mean that gun owners should be punished for someone using their guns? I'm just not entirely sure the direction you are going here so I can't really answer, but in general I support people being held responsible for "grossly negligent" or "extremely careless" behavior.
How does that make my statement that most gun homicides are criminals killing other criminals false? Homicides being differentiated from suicides as being the deliberate killing of one person by another.
Technically suicide is a kind of homicide when using some definitions. It was just him going at you with a technicality which didn't really affect your point. It's why I called him out on it. By some definitions, it's just the killing of a human by a human.
I’m a firm believer that guns should be treated in the way we treat cars in America. In the 30’s when cars became a danger to public safety, it was an obvious choice to install the regulations around cars that we imposed. With guns it’s obvious they are a liability to our safety despite the benefits they provide. If you are going to own a gun, you need to go through some basic competency course. Second, every gun should be register to the owner like a car is. Lastly, you should be required to have liability insurance. That way we let the market dictate and self regulate risk associated with gun owners in the way the atf probably couldn’t do on their own.
We're not in the same logic or language system, unless you think that suicide victims are automatically criminals. Like a 16 yr old kid, who is really depressed, finds his dad's handgun, and puts it to his forehead, is somehow equivalent to a drug dealer involved in a shoot out over turf. I don't equate those, but I won't pretend to tell you that you should not. Interesting. Anyway, I think many would find it surprising that the majority of gun deaths in this country are suicides. Suicide is often a rash act, and making it harder to find an easy means to suicide can prevent many or even most suicides, if one cares about that sort of thing.
Let me translate B-Bob, you're dealing with a detached, rigidly ideological proponent of a white nationalist,19th century America. He said homicides, you retorted with suicides. He has little empathy or compassion for the deluge of gun deaths and such zero desire for solutions, he's just trying to point out that homicides aren't suicides and thus his point stands.
To chime in on the stats discussion above: - most gun deaths are indeed suicide ~60% - self-defense use of guns are only 0.2% (low) to 8% (high) of gun-related events. The high and low represent which side of the aisle the report is from. - states with more guns have more gun homicides but not more non-gun homicides (in other words, more guns = more homicides). It's not just about violent tendencies - it's about access. - 85% of gun deaths involve a person someone knows. Guns are used mainly to kill acquaintances. - US dwarfs other 1st countries in gun-violence statistics across the board. I dunno how anyone can read these stats and think guns are a good for the USA. These stats are not partisan; they can be found on the Bureau of Justice website.
I think one of the main problems when it comes to conversations about gun legislation is that the kinds of people who chime in are the same kinds of people who get their opinions from people who would post stuff like this Crazy enough, one of these is actually something that was put out there as anti-gun propaganda by USA Today
I think it is just a definitional issue. The definition of homicide I was using doesn't include suicide. Therefor, saying suicides make up the majority of gun deaths does nothing to prove or disprove what I said about homicides. So at least the second half of CometsWin's last sentence was correct.
Ah, thanks. Hydra, my bad. I was indeed semantically sloppy. I read your initial post as "gun deaths," as per thread topic. Cheers.
However these ideas do very little to stop the over all gun violence. Banning some semi-automatic weapons and not others is not very practical. By Deeper background checks, are you implying mental health concerns? Remember this is not just a guns rights concern, this is an ACLU concern. Encouraging states to play together really helps. If states would come together and create agreeing reciprocal permits, then things like those scary assault weapons can be required to have permits instead of bans.
I don't qualify as pro-gun but I fully agree there is a Constitutional right to firearms and believe any attempts to disarm the population will be impractical and cause much greater harm. I think these are some good suggestions. I like the idea of making gun owners more responsible and am coming around to the idea of requiring gun owners to insure their weapons and also to have liability insurance. I like the idea of self-registration but I would make it mandatory. Nothing in the 2nd Amendment prohibits registration and it's ridiculous to me that we don't have a national registration of guns. Along the same lines one of the problems with background checks and other information regarding firearms and those who purchase firearms is that the monitoring systems for those programs are antiquated and woefully underfunded. This could be easily be resolved without the need for new laws. For guns themselves I support magazine limits. From looking at recent mass shootings I think it is clear that magazine limits make a difference in lethality. For instance the shooter of Gabby Giffords was only stopped when he expended his expanded magazine. I also think things like bump stocks and other modifications that allow a semi-automatic to function like a full automatic should be banned. Going beyond firearms themselves if we are going to blame mental health then we need to get serious about addressing mental health. Mental health treatment and access to mental health is very poor. Too often many of the same politicians who say that mass shootings is a mental health crisis at the same time have cut funding for mental health treatment and opposed things like insurance parity for mental health. Finally regarding the amount of firearms and ammunition out there the toothpaste is already out of the tube and it's going to be very difficult to practically reduce the amount of weapons. I think this is a cultural problem and one that is self-perpetuating. With more weapons available of greater lethality there is a greater demand for more weapons of greater lethality for those who feel they need them to protect themselves. It is a vicious cycle and a literal arms race. At the same time though the overall rate of violent crime has been dropping and we are safer than we ever have been before. This needs to be a cultural change and one that I don't think can ultimately be dictated by laws.
I'm not talking about banning anything who really needs a 30 round mag.ACLU can go hide in a corner somewhere Mental health is a real issue when it comes to guns thats whats the most important part of it all.Semi auto weapons i don't feel that is the problem having them in the wrong hands of some people who have mental issues is the problem for me.
