The Gun Control Thread

[ELVIS]

I thought Asshale and Dickforbreath said they're not coming for our guns...

[lesfunk]

I picked up 500 rounds tonight. I'll probably grab another thousand next time I'm out near the gun shop.

[DONNIEP]

Yes - the NY gun law does allow grandfathering of banned weapons IF registered. Or you have one year to sell them to an out of state buyer. And yes, it is now illegal to load a mag with more than 7 bullets - even if your pistol's mag holds more than 7 and you passed a background check to legally purchase it.

[lesfunk]

An article on Gun Control Ignorance

Thomas Sowell

Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of "gun control" advocates?

The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.

Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, DC, is a classic example, but just one among many.

When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, handgun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.

The few counter-examples offered by gun control zealots do not stand up under scrutiny. Perhaps their strongest talking point is that Britain has stronger gun control laws than the United States and lower murder rates.

But, if you look back through history, you will find that Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries – and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun control laws than the United States. Indeed, neither country had stringent gun control for most of that time.

In the middle of the 20th century, you could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked. New York, which at that time had had the stringent Sullivan Law restricting gun ownership since 1911, still had several times the gun murder rate of London, as well as several times the London murder rate with other weapons.

Neither guns nor gun control was not the reason for the difference in murder rates. People were the difference.

Yet many of the most zealous advocates of gun control laws, on both sides of the Atlantic, have also been advocates of leniency toward criminals.

In Britain, such people have been so successful that legal gun ownership has been reduced almost to the vanishing point, while even most convicted felons in Britain are not put behind bars. The crime rate, including the rate of crimes committed with guns, is far higher in Britain now than it was back in the days when there were few restrictions on Britons buying firearms. In 1954, there were only a dozen armed robberies in London but, by the 1990s – after decades of ever tightening gun ownership restrictions – there were more than a hundred times as many armed robberies.

Gun control zealots' choice of Britain for comparison with the United States has been wholly tendentious, not only because it ignored the history of the two countries, but also because it ignored other countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States, such as Russia, Brazil and Mexico. All of these countries have higher murder rates than the United States.

You could compare other sets of countries and get similar results. Gun ownership has been three times as high in Switzerland as in Germany, but the Swiss have had lower murder rates. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland.

Guns are not the problem. People are the problem – including people who are determined to push gun control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts.

There is innocent ignorance and there is invincible, dogmatic and self-righteous ignorance. Every tragic mass shooting seems to bring out examples of both among gun control advocates.

[ELVIS]

Impeach Obama

[FORD]

Nobody needs to own military assault weapons. And criminals and crazies don't need to own guns at all.

That should be the foundation of any gun legislation. All the discussion of licensing and training, and how much fucking ammo any one person should reasonably need to store in their house at any one time can always happen later.

But first, let's keep the fucking people who have no business owning guns from getting them in the first place. And stop fucking blaming Obama for it. This insanity was going on a Hell of a long time before any of us ever heard of him.

[DONNIEP]

So no semiauto rifles or shotguns or handguns at all?

[lesfunk]

Adam Lanza didn't own any guns.

[FORD]

Adam Lanza didn't own any guns.

No, his mother did. And she was only slightly less fucked in the head than her son was (as evidenced by her paranoid lunatic gun hoarding AND teaching a mentally defective kid how to shoot them) so she should never have been allowed to own them either.

[FORD]

So no semiauto rifles or shotguns or handguns at all?

Shotguns and handguns aren't military assault weapons. Though I doubt anybody has a legitimate need for a 30 round clip in their handgun like that sick fuck Laughner used in Tucson (and no doubt purchased at a gun show somewhere in the desert)

[DONNIEP]

Shotguns and handguns aren't military assault weapons. Though I doubt anybody has a legitimate need for a 30 round clip in their handgun like that sick fuck Laughner used in Tucson (and no doubt purchased at a gun show somewhere in the desert)

But a handgun with a lanyard loop would qualify as having one "military" characteristic.

[lesfunk]

30 round clips are great. I don't have to stop to reload as often or change out the magazine.

[lesfunk]

FORD, What do you think of this gun? Should it be banned?

[DONNIEP]

And who decides what is "gun hoarding" and what is collecting? If someone broke into my house and stole my safe and popped it open and went on a rampage I'd probably be accused of "gun hoarding". But I'm not a militia nutter nor a prepper (I have enough food to last until Taco Bell opens up tomorrow).

[lesfunk]

better yet which one of these should be regulated?