That was a genuine offer to gun control to come to the negotiating table and make its case so we can move forward. That has to be some guiding principle to creating good legislation and if there is anything better it must be discussed as well. One has to start somewhere and obviously one does not set out to create bad legislation. This is an effort to create good legislation from empirical data.
It is quite obvious that a causal relationship is needed. If I said cheese causes people to kill there would be no argument it was false and controlling cheese simply stupid.
Gun control claims guns cause people to commit crimes and therefore controlling guns will reduce crime. All I am asking for is explain how gun cause crime in order to produce the most effective legislation.
Is there anybody who can fault that logic or propose a better way of determining the best approach to legislation? Surely gun control advocates should leap at the chance to seriously discuss the best way forward that we can all agree on. I am willing to bet every gun owner I know will support this type of legislation in order to reduce crime or increase public safety with certainty.
YES - I can fault your logic and the resulting standard you want to make the defacto rule here.
And YES - every gun owner would indeed support your proposal because it is fundamentally biased unfairly in favor of gun owners and establishes a standard that is fundamentally seriously flawed and outright dishonest.
While it is virtually impossible to say for sure if guns cause crime, it is easy to say that guns make it easier for bad things to happen - and that includes crime and suicide. A gun simply affords one convenience, speed, distance and ease of acquiring and using far more than many other arms would be in similar situations. To deny that is not even rational in the real world we live in. Proof can be found in the bomber of guns used in crimes compared to the number of any other weapon used in that same crime. Guns are the weapon of choice far more than any other weapon.
My reason for supporting things like registrations and universal background checks and limitations on magazine size IS NOT BASED ON ANY ABILITY TO REDUCE CRIME. That issue is so fraught with far too many other variables for anyone to agree on its impact or effects. If we passed all those things tomorrow and crime dropped 20% across the nation, we would simply hear the usual correlation is not causation cliches and proof demanded to show that it was the gun legislation that caused it to the the exclusion of everything else.
And we all know such a challenge is fundamentally flawed from the start because our society is a complicated one and no researcher can isolate one variable from all the others - even if they could supposedly identify all the others that may play a role in reducing crime - to demonstrate that yes, it was this particular effort that reduced crime and no other variable played a role.
My desire for gun regulation is based on one simple desire: I believe the American people should be able to have the society they want to live in providing doing so retains the right of decent people to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
No such phony standard as IT WILL REDUCE CRIME needs to be employed as it is fundamentally flawed as I have explained.
If I and the majority of others want to live in a society where one cannot have automatic weapons - that is our right as a people.
If I and the majority of others want to live in a society where one must pass a background check to buy any firearm from any person - that is our right as a people.
If I and the majority of others want to live in a society where there is a reasonable limit on the size of gun magazines - that is our right as a people.
All those things are more than constitutional providing the right to keep and bear arms can be exercised and enjoyed by the American people.
