What is the purpose of assault weapons?

[venkman]

Sorry if this has been posted earlier. One of the better gun control articles I've read.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/20...n-gun-control/

Fantastic. I'm happy to read that Utah allows CCW holding teachers to carry their guns in schools. I honestly thought it was illegal here. I wish they'd advertise it more so that the psychopaths knew it too.

Also, he makes a great point in that most of the times when these nuts are confronted with any armed response it shatters their fantasy world and they commit suicide or give up.

[calicoug]

Since when did the gun shows start selling "grenades, rockets, and machine guns"?

That settles it. People clearly now need grenades and rockets. If the bad guys have them, how else can we defend ourselves?

[calicoug]

Proof? Please site your source that says they aren't used for self-defense?

That isn't possible to prove. That is why I asked for proof they are. What do you have?

[frank ryan]

Apologies, then.

Yes, I believe there should be restrictions, and that there are weapons that are and should be off limits.

Isn't a non-licensed dealers the same as a black market dealer?

No, you can sell a gun as a private citizen and you if you aren't a registered gun dealer you don't have to bother with any paperwork or pestersome background checks, Ayn Rand be praised and it is perfectly legal. And yeah this is big source of arms for the cartels, particularly AKs and what not.
Yeah I'm not sold on banning guns and I'm a little leery about expanding the governments ability to declare someone too mentally ill to own a gun.

[byu71]

I was shocked, just shocked. Based on everything I heard or read from the media, what the guy from the NRA said was received negatively. He was an idiot, cared about guns more than children, his suggestion about security at schools was nonsense and he is basically a buffoon.

Then I see a survey of Americans and top on their list of what can be done is security in schools. 4th was ban on weapons.

You just have to love our media. No longer do they even care or pretend to be presenting the news and let the public decide.

When the public thinks taxes should go up on the very rich, the poll is pointed to over and over again. This is what Americans wants. In this case, even if it is only around 64%, Americans are smart, not self serving.

On the gun issue though, I guess Americans are buffoons like the NRA guy and need to be educated. I am so greatful for a highly intelligent press.

[Uncle Ted]

Charles Krauthammer: As We Debate Mass Shootings, Consider Everything

Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea.
Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere.

Let's be serious:

(1) The Weapon

Within hours of last week's Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus was the weapon and the demand was for new gun laws.
Several prominent pro-gun Democrats remorsefully professed new openness to gun control. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is introducing a new assault weapons ban.

And the president emphasized guns and ammo above all else in announcing the creation of a new task force.
I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994.

The problem was: It didn't work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple.
Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, it's almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.

Had To Kill First

Feinstein's law, for example, would exempt 900 weapons. And that's the least of the loopholes. Even the guns that are banned can be made legal with simple, minor modifications.

Most fatal, however, is the grandfathering of existing weapons and magazines.

That's one of the reasons the '94 law failed. At the time, there were 1.5 million assault weapons in circulation and 25 million large-capacity (i.e., more than 10 bullets) magazines. A reservoir that immense can take 100 years to draw down.

IMO, it will take creating a police state (e.g. random, warrantless searches) as well because of (1) it is possible to build guns with simple tools, and (2) any gun ban will simply create a black-market for the guns that have been banned.

(2) The Killer

Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier days they did not roam free.
As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or to others.
I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.

Why do you think we have so many homeless? Destitution?
Poverty has declined since the 1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on.

A tiny percentage of the mentally ill become mass killers. Just about everyone around Tucson shooter Jared Loughner sensed he was mentally ill and dangerous.

But in effect, he had to kill before he could be put away — and (forcibly) treated. Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker.

Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.

(3) The Culture

We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It's not just movies.
Deters The Rational

Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence.

And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.
If we're serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table.

It's not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

I find it ironic that these hollywood friends recently made a commercial calling for a new gun ban. Many off these people have been in violent movies and other media. BTW, here is a better version of their commercial...

[YOUTUBE]IJhWVf4e4-s[/YOUTUBE]

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50%. Gun murders as well. We're living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent.

While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage "entertainment" that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there's a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing "entertainment" violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

That's a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there's no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.
We made that trade after 9/11. We make it every time the TSA invades your body at an airport. How much are we prepared to trade away after Newtown?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

[Goatnapper'96]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin makes my nipples hard. To me the issue is still whether or not whatever types of bans will make us safe enough to justify the loss of liberty.

Secular liberals are still seeking to answer Sooner's prescient question. They are looking for their god to protect us all.

[UtahDan]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

The left gets completely stymied in this conversation when it appeals purely to emotion and refuses to think about the practicalities. The right gets completely stymied when it wraps self in the flag and characterizes gun ownership as an essential liberty. That is a disingenuous position unless you really think the government is coming to get you.

The real conversation here, as GN says, is utility. But both extremes are too self righteous to stop characterizing it as being about their principles.

[SoonerCoug]

Sounds like all firefighters should be carrying guns. Is it illegal for firefighters to carry guns?

[byu71]

That is a disingenuous position unless you really think the government is coming to get you.

Yea, I think the government is coming to get me. Surprisingly, my children who are not "rich", not socially conservative, not in love with the religious right, also worry the government may be out to get them.

Alot of people see Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the MSNBC crowd and wonder what do they mean we have to change America. They don't say change from of the wrongs, they say change America. You tell me what the hell they mean and what is their long term plan.

[All-American]

Sounds like all firefighters should be carrying guns. Is it illegal for firefighters to carry guns?

Probably not nuclear guns.

[All-American]

The left gets completely stymied in this conversation when it appeals purely to emotion and refuses to think about the practicalities. The right gets completely stymied when it wraps self in the flag and characterizes gun ownership as an essential liberty. That is a disingenuous position unless you really think the government is coming to get you.

The real conversation here, as GN says, is utility. But both extremes are too self righteous to stop characterizing it as being about their principles.

Five folks in black robes in DC say gun ownership is an essential liberty. It's not disingenuous.

[UtahDan]

Five folks in black robes in DC say gun ownership is an essential liberty. It's not disingenuous.

No they don't.

[Non Sequitur]

Yea, I think the government is coming to get me. Surprisingly, my children who are not "rich", not socially conservative, not in love with the religious right, also worry the government may be out to get them.

Alot of people see Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the MSNBC crowd and wonder what do they mean we have to change America. They don't say change from of the wrongs, they say change America. You tell me what the hell they mean and what is their long term plan.

If the government comes to get you, it's a lot more likely to come from your right than from your left.

[frank ryan]

I was shocked, just shocked. Based on everything I heard or read from the media, what the guy from the NRA said was received negatively. He was an idiot, cared about guns more than children, his suggestion about security at schools was nonsense and he is basically a buffoon.

Then I see a survey of Americans and top on their list of what can be done is security in schools. 4th was ban on weapons.

You just have to love our media. No longer do they even care or pretend to be presenting the news and let the public decide.

When the public thinks taxes should go up on the very rich, the poll is pointed to over and over again. This is what Americans wants. In this case, even if it is only around 64%, Americans are smart, not self serving.

On the gun issue though, I guess Americans are buffoons like the NRA guy and need to be educated. I am so greatful for a highly intelligent press.

I can't the NRA guy and it doesn't have much to do with that speech. Although I do wonder if he wants violent video games banned.