• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

...............guns...............

Even in the best of times, gov't functions better without our trust. That is, nonpartisan vigilance and skepticism of all things gov't. The question for me is... why did we ever have the illusion that we should trust them?

Fair point as well
 
Guns were made for the sole purpose of killing others.

Other what? Humans? Zombies? Cute furry woodland creatures?

Yup, no one ever fed their family with a gun. All those gangsta-thug pioneers pushing our country west....

With 80% of the population headed toward poverty... we'll need those guns more for the same reason we needed them then... to eat!
 
Over half of those are suicides; some are justifiable homicides by police or citizens; others are accidents. Violent crime has been trending downward for around 40 years. Why are you determined to infringe on my liberties to solve an overdramatized problem that is already solving itself?

if you don't like "assault" rifles, don't own one.

chart guns.jpg

You're right, fixing itself.
 
Background checks for every gun sale.....

So an unenforceable law that puts unrealistic expectations on law enforcement?

How do you track non-commercial gun sales?

What about gifts between family members?
 
So an unenforceable law that puts unrealistic expectations on law enforcement?

How do you track non-commercial gun sales?

What about gifts between family members?

So by your assessment because we can't feasibly stop illegal gun sale we shouldn't attempt to. If we except your premise we need to catch every rapist, drunk driver, or speeder and if we don't we should have those laws to stop them either.
 
So by your assessment because we can't feasibly stop illegal gun sale we shouldn't attempt to.

What does the law accomplish? If the gun sales are already illegal, the background check law means nothing. It doesn't help track illegal gun sales because it's unenforceable.

If we except your premise we need to catch every rapist, drunk driver, or speeder and if we don't we should have those laws to stop them either.

Because I don't think selling a gun or gifting a gun to a family member is such a crime that it warrants the same scrutiny as we give rapists, drunk drivers, and speeders. I'm sorry you don't like guns. That doesn't give you the moral authority to make life difficult for those who choose to exercise that right.
 
Background checks for every gun sale.....

Using who/what to do the checking? Consider the logistics of implementing that nightmare. You first have to get 300 million existing guns accounted for, then have to keep records (just like car titles) for all guns. Remember that BG checks alone accomplish nothing, since a simple straw purchase easily defeats that system. Without a required national registration program that law is totally unenforcable. Many states, e.g. California, have tried this and it involves a "transfer" fee of about $35 per gun sale to cover the paperwork costs alone. I have no idea how effective that CA program is but have not seen a massive drop in CA gun crime.
 
On a more serious note, I agree, but you know what else there is in the constitution? Limits on every right :lol:

They didnt write it in pencil or on a chalk board. I wonder why they wrote it in pen?
 
Using who/what to do the checking? Consider the logistics of implementing that nightmare. You first have to get 300 million existing guns accounted for, then have to keep records (just like car titles) for all guns. Remember that BG checks alone accomplish nothing, since a simple straw purchase easily defeats that system. Without a required national registration program that law is totally unenforcable. Many states, e.g. California, have tried this and it involves a "transfer" fee of about $35 per gun sale to cover the paperwork costs alone. I have no idea how effective that CA program is but have not seen a massive drop in CA gun crime.

Even with a national gun registry, how are you going to get all the guns registered? You can grandfather old guns in I suppose but then if someone gets stopped with an unregistered gun, they can just say "oh, I got it before the registry."
 
Even with a national gun registry, how are you going to get all the guns registered? You can grandfather old guns in I suppose but then if someone gets stopped with an unregistered gun, they can just say "oh, I got it before the registry."

It was done with motor vehicles (except for farm use only). How is indeed the issue, since ATF has only 2,500 field agents and the FBI seems to be quite busy with the very profitable war on drugs. ;)

One must presume that state and local LEOs would get in on the action if they could pass local laws to keep the revenue. The problem is that with that system you have a nightmare of state/local gun "rights" laws that each must pass SCOTUS scrutiny. Unlike auto title/registration gun ownership is an individual constitutional right not merely a state issued privilege.
 
It was done with motor vehicles (except for farm use only). How is indeed the issue, since ATF has only 2,500 field agents and the FBI seems to be quite busy with the very profitable war on drugs. ;)

One must presume that state and local LEOs would get in on the action if they could pass local laws to keep the revenue. The problem is that with that system you have a nightmare of state/local gun "rights" laws that each must pass SCOTUS scrutiny. Unlike auto title/registration gun ownership is an individual constitutional right not merely a state issued privilege.

The number of cars in 1903 were nothing compared to the number of guns now.

That wouldn't be a national registry either. The expectation of Gun registry is also different than a car registry. You're not going to face scrutiny for merely possessing a car without registration. This is besides the fact that cars are not protected in the constitution.
 
Cars: Made for driving
Alcohol: Made for drinking
Hands/Feet/Fists: Made for grabbing
Hammer: Made for hammering nails
Knives: Made for cutting food
Guns: Made for shooting,

See the difference?
You grab with your feet?
 
I'll bet more than half of that decrease came from NYC... and other stop and frisk zones...
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where's yours?
 
The number of cars in 1903 were nothing compared to the number of guns now.

That wouldn't be a national registry either. The expectation of Gun registry is also different than a car registry. You're not going to face scrutiny for merely possessing a car without registration. This is besides the fact that cars are not protected in the constitution.

I suppose we are nearing being on the same page here. Naturally one can have an untitled car, limtted to use off road and that must be trailered from place to place, yet to actually use it for transportation it must be tagged/titled. That would be true, I assume, for guns as well. Only if you have the gun off of your private property would its pedigree likely come under gov't scrutiny. I agree that the number of firearms in circulation, currently about the same as the number of cars, would make the initial line to "register" them a nightmare. At $35 per gun, that would cost over $1 billion just to get the ball rolling.
 
Yes: only one of those things is SPECIFICALLY protected in the Bill of Rights... guess which...

It says "arms," so I'd say hands/feet/fists is the closest on that list?
 
Using who/what to do the checking? Consider the logistics of implementing that nightmare. You first have to get 300 million existing guns accounted for, then have to keep records (just like car titles) for all guns. Remember that BG checks alone accomplish nothing, since a simple straw purchase easily defeats that system. Without a required national registration program that law is totally unenforcable. Many states, e.g. California, have tried this and it involves a "transfer" fee of about $35 per gun sale to cover the paperwork costs alone. I have no idea how effective that CA program is but have not seen a massive drop in CA gun crime.

Not true.
 
Even with a national gun registry, how are you going to get all the guns registered? You can grandfather old guns in I suppose but then if someone gets stopped with an unregistered gun, they can just say "oh, I got it before the registry."

We had a national long gun registry here in Canada for about a decade but it has been destroyed now. Only people who registered were law abiding citizens and only benefit the registry had was being able to identify the owners of a gun that was stolen and then used in a crime. But the police liked it because they at least had some reference to the number of such weapons in their jurisdiction. They don't always put such information to good or legal uses, however. During the recent floods in Alberta, the RCMP conducted a mandatory evacuation of a town and then proceeded to check every home and they removed every weapon they found in each home even going so far as to find hidden weapons and to remove weapons that were stored in locked, secure gun storage cases and vaults. People rightly want to know how they knew who had and where weapons may be since the gun registry was supposed to have been destroyed by legislated mandate.
 
Back
Top Bottom