United States Gun Control Megathread

[Donward]

A minority works at blue collar job, saves cash to buy an AR-15

 

Reporter for billiionaire's tax shelter starts clutching her pearls and collapses on feinting couch. Wins award for most back-handed ways she can describe an interview subject.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/04/08/feature/the-allure-of-the-ar-15-i-know-i-dont-need-it-says-one-recent-buyer-but-thats-not-the-point/?utm_term=.9645a023b864

 

Edit: Oh look, they interviewed a former ATF agent who now works for a gun control group. What a shock! 

 

 

“I would compare it to the same reason Americans might want a muscle car or enjoy a muscle car: It’s American-made, it has outsized power,” said Chipman, who left ATF after a 25-year career and now serves as a senior policy adviser to the gun-control advocacy group Giffords.

There’s a sort of “X-Game-type sensibility” to it, he said, a fixture of “American culture that I see most often with men.”

For those who served in the military, there might be “a connection to owning that which you were issued,” he added. “I think there’s also an element for people who chose not to serve that this somehow allows them to connect with that service without them having to do it — like you can kind of act patriotic without having to do it.”

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

Liberals write the shittiest fan fiction.

 

http://archive.li/2018.04.09-184207/https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/6/1754989/-An-Open-Letter-to-Second-Amendment-Enthusiasts

 

 

An Open Letter to Second Amendment Enthusiasts

Apr 06, 2018 6:07pm GMT by DavidLoftus

64 6

 

Has it occurred to you that you might have committed a fatal strategic error by throwing your lot behind the National Rifle Association?

 

 

Could you consider the possibility that over the past 40 years, the NRA chose a strategy that guaranteed it will ultimately lose the war to set domestic firearms policy?

 

Let’s not get into any of the specific arguments you’ve undoubtedly seen and defended in recent months and years: the nature and scope of the Second Amendment, the notion that guns protect one’s home, how many lives are supposedly saved by armed citizens versus lives lost, that guns will ultimately defend you against some sort of government tyranny.

 

Put those aside.

 

I want you to take a brief look at the big picture.

 

Armed is not protected

Consider the possibility that the NRA’s never-give-an-inch approach to U.S. firearms regulation might ultimately have set up you and other gun owners for failure in getting to have a say on the design of U.S. gun policy.

 

In order to understand this, you’ll have to try to view the situation from the perspective of the majority of your fellow citizens who are not so enthusiastic about gun ownership and national firearms policy as it’s been driven by the NRA in recent decades.

 

A basic, unassailable fact is that more than 30,000 American men, women, and children die every year from gunshot wounds. Or at least that was the case for many years past; the number may be climbing. It rose to 36,252 in 2015, and 38,658 in 2016, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

Do only “bad guys” kill Americans?

If those numbers sound high to you, that’s because most public debates over guns, especially if the NRA and activist gun owners present the stats, immediately cut suicides from the total, because those typically make up two-thirds all gun deaths. This has the virtue, from the gun advocate’s perspective, of making firearms fatalities mostly a matter of criminal, mentally ill, or terrorist shooters: It’s a “bad guy with a gun” issue.

 

But why exclude suicides? The victim is just as dead, his or her absence grieved just as much by survivors, and a gun was the tool. The fact is, once you return suicides to the frame, most firearms deaths involve “good guys with guns,” who have little or no criminal record or history of mental illness . . . and even more troubling, several hundred of those annual suicides take wives and children with them (which doesn’t happen with hangings, pills, or leaps from a building or bridge).

 

“Good guys with guns” shoot themselves and family

It’s especially cruel to dismiss these deaths as unworthy of scrutiny when hundreds of them are U.S. military veterans, active-duty service people, and domestic law enforcement officers. A 2013 Veterans Administration study calculated that about “22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, orone every 65 minutes….”

 

Though that study did not identify method, another one published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine found that, of 2,206 suicides by military personnel and veterans in 16 states, 68.1 percent -- more than two-thirds -- were committed with a firearm.

 

Only figures for active-duty police officers are available. According to Andy O’Hara, retired California Highway Patrol officer who founded the nonprofit The Badge of Life to collect statistics on police suicides and offer support to prevent them, no federal agency collects data on suicides that involve retired law enforcement officials.
 

 

One would think a gun owner would be especially interested in trying to save the lives of some of these well-trained and presumably patriotic Americans.

 

Some other time, I’ll analyze the assumptions and blind spots in arguments that overlook the role of guns in suicides. For now, just keep that figure of 30,000-to-40,000 annual U.S. gun deaths in mind.

 

To imply, as the NRA has by resisting any sort of firearms regulation, that the lives of 30,000 American citizens -- or even just 5,000 or a 100, if that’s how many we might save -- are less valuable than one’s right to own as many different kinds of handguns, rifles, semi-automatic rifles, and other deadly tools and ammunition as one likes . . . well, that comes across to the average American as unfeeling, brutal, and even morally reprehensible.

 

Second Amendment enthusiasts have tried to brush off calls for smarter regulations and better enforcement with the argument that if you don’t know how to handle a gun, you don’t have standing to discuss national firearms policy. But if you’re the experts, then you should have been pushing for solutions.

You might have shown some concern for your fellow citizens’ lives. You could have said: “Maybe we can do something to save some of these men, women, and children every year, instead of behaving as if more than 30,000 lives was ‘collateral damage,’ a mere ‘cost of doing business,’ to preserve my unlimited gun ownership.”

 

 

Sooner or later, given more than 30,000 gun fatalities every year, year after year, the U.S. was bound to amass too many victims and grieving survivors. Also, too many bystanders -- the victims’ non-gun-owning neighbors -- would eventually have to say: “This is not right. This is not acceptable. There has to be a way to reduce this casual, routine carnage.”

 

The signs were there. In the wake of various grievous shootings, nonprofit advocacy groups from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (2012) and Gabby and Mark Giffords’s Americans for Responsible Solutions (2013), to Everytown for Gun Safety (2014) have launched and proliferated. They joined forces with previous, longtime activist organizations such as the National Council to Control Handguns (1974, later known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) and Stop Handgun Violence (1995).

 

You could have led the way. You could have been a hero here. You could have steered the NRA back to its honorable past as a proposer of sensible gun control regulations, such as permits for concealed carry, higher prison sentences for crimes committed with a gun, a waiting period for purchase, a ban on sales to non-citizens, and making gun sales records available to police (all successful NRA lobbying initiatives in the 1920s).

But by standing silent, if not actively supporting the NRA and saying, in effect (as Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher actually dared to say after the 2014 UC Santa Barbara Isla Vista mass shooting, in which a 22-year-old killed 6 and injured 14), “Your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights” . . . you appeared to your fellow Americans as selfish, cruel, and amoral.

And the war to reset national firearms policy may finally have gotten up and strode off without you.

[Donward]

Short fisk.

 

1) This reads like a rehash of every anti-Second Amendment op-ed, newspaper column, letter to the editor, or blog post that has ever been written. There is absolutely nothing new or novel this writer brings up that hasn't been vomited out tens of thousands of times before. It's like there is a form letter the Left uses when they write these. Hell, I could write one of these opinion pieces, and do a better and more convincing job.

 

2) Has this writer ever considered that a sizable portion of the Firearms Community actually really, REALLY dislike the NRA. And that's because they're seen as not doing enough to protect our freedom and actually being just a money making scheme for the lobbyists that make up the staff. The only reason we tolerate it is because the NRA is so ubiquitous. 

 

3) Oh, it's the same old gun statistics. And they come from... The Centers of Disease Control? But I thought the anti-gunners said the CDC didn't study gun violence? I hear it over, and over, and over again that gun violence needs to be studied by the CDC. Well, I guess we solved that issue!

 

4) No, gun owners want the entirely separate issue of suicide to be addressed. Suicide is a mental health issue.  But we don't want it folded in and usurped by a group of political opportunists who use the tragedy of suicide as a stick to beat their opponents over the head with.

 

5) We're also concerned about veteran suicides and - particularly - how the VA has fallen down on the job with our vets. I guess that's why we elected a US President who campaigned aggressively on this issue and not the gun control candidate who ignored it.

 

6) Second Amendment advocates have led the way on Hard Crime for Armed Crime legislation. Here in Washington State, a local conservative talk show host led a statewide Initiative to pass a Three Strikes and You're Out law for instance. The Left in the state wants to repeal this legislation.

 

7) As for the "Dead Kids", I dare say that the majority of gun owners would favor tougher penalties for mass shooters, including the death penalty as a way to deter shooters. Unfortunately the Left will come up with a thousand excuses to oppose this sensible measure.

 

8) And finally, Your Feelz and Ignorance on the Subject don't trump my Constitutional Rights, rights that have been handed down not since the founding of this country, but are Natural Rights that go back a millennium with English common law.  

[Ulric]

However, Donward, the solutions that we have to the problems of suicide and mass shooters involves actually addressing the problem instead of feel good measures. And since we don't have the same solution to the problems as the leftists do, then we obviously don't want to solve the problem. This is why there is gridlock on any type of reforms in the firearms world. The left is so self absorbed and has a sense of moral superiority that they are convinced that their answer is the only correct answer, and any deviation from that cannot be tolerated. This is why they resort to ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments when they are confronted with different view points. They cannot defend their ideas on a rational basis, because they didn't arrive at their conclusions on a rational basis. They are convinced that they are so much smarter than the knuckle dragging, gun toting, bible thumping, backwoods yokels that they automatically categorize anything said by such sub human scum that does not align with the divine words of Chomsky is wrong think, and must be mocked and ridiculed to the maximum extent possible.

 

The long and short of it is, they are learning resistant because they are so convinced of their intellectual superiority. Why is it that the only solution that the left has to this problem is to ban and confiscate inanimate objects? I have yet to hear anything else from that side of the isle, and it is entirely incompatible with my side of the isle. Instead of attempting to find solutions that both sides of the isle can live with, the left continues to try and brow beat dissenters into submission through social stigmas and discrimination. Any solutions that come from the right side of the isle are entirely incompatible with the left side, because the solutions from the right involve people being able to keep and bear arms.

[Xlucine]

Wasn't the 1920's NRA more concerned with keeping guns away from black people? They've changed a lot since then of course, but of all the flavours of NRA that we've had over the decades they had to idolise that one?

[LostCosmonaut]

23 minutes ago, Xlucine said:

Wasn't the 1920's NRA more concerned with keeping guns away from black people? They've changed a lot since then of course, but of all the flavours of NRA that we've had over the decades they had to idolise that one?

IIRC the NRA back then was more about gun safety and hunting/rifle clubs. Usually when you hear "keeping guns away from black people brought up" it's regarding California restricting open carry after seeing Black Panthers walking around with rifles. Since this was done while Reagan was governor, it often gets linked to modern Republicans/conservatives.

 

(imo the Mulford Act was a dumb overreaction)

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

[LostCosmonaut]

The Venn diagram of people who think cops are racist and that you should just call the cops and passively wait if you are in a dangerous situation is probably a fucking circle.

 

(Also, half of those people would probably call the cops if they saw a brown person anywhere near their McMansion)

[Sturgeon]

1 hour ago, Xlucine said:

Wasn't the 1920's NRA more concerned with keeping guns away from black people? They've changed a lot since then of course, but of all the flavours of NRA that we've had over the decades they had to idolise that one?

 

No you're thinking of the Democratic Party.

[Meplat]

3 hours ago, Xlucine said:

Wasn't the 1920's NRA more concerned with keeping guns away from black people? They've changed a lot since then of course, but of all the flavours of NRA that we've had over the decades they had to idolise that one?

What..

 

No, if anything it was bitching about how shittily shooting was being treated in the olympic games, and showing people how to sporterize surplus MN91's. 

Then you had articles from Julian Hatcher about the Pedersen device, or what school was placing well in shooting matches. 

I have a bunch of old (1920's,30's and 40's era) American Rifleman mags

[Sturgeon]

Guys,

I have a foolproof solution for reducing gun deaths by at least 7/8ths!

 

Ban men.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Personally I think the reason your elites are so keen to disarm you is so that you can't drag them out of their bunkers and shoot them in the skull after they start WWIII. 

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

10 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Personally I think the reason your elites are so keen to disarm you is so that you can't drag them out of their bunkers and shoot them in the skull after they start WWIII. 

 

If a politician wants to disarm their people, it's probably because the politician wants to do something that would get them shot otherwise.

[Toxn]

1 hour ago, Sturgeon said:

Guys,

I have a foolproof solution for reducing gun deaths by at least 7/8ths!

 

Ban men.

I'm leaning more towards stringent licencing and permits.

[Bronezhilet]

I agree, men are only allowed with proper licensing.

 

If you have to hand in your man-card, you're finished!

[Toxn]

59 minutes ago, Bronezhilet said:

I agree, men are only allowed with proper licensing.

 

If you have to hand in your man-card, you're finished!

"You got the goods?"

"You know I'm good for it. 190cm, 120kg, T-count over a thousand."

"And the IQ?"

"Mid-90s, with a history of violent outbursts and impulsive behavior"

{money surreptitiously changes hands}

[Meplat]

9 hours ago, Toxn said:

I'm leaning more towards stringent licencing and permits.

I'd rather see that for politicians and bureaucrats.

 

Maybe with an added shock-collar, and the remote(s) in the hands of their constituents.

[Toxn]

33 minutes ago, Meplat said:

I'd rather see that for politicians and bureaucrats.

 

Maybe with an added shock-collar, and the remote(s) in the hands of their constituents.

Well the one approach would largely solve the other, given that something like 20% of your senate is female.

[Ulric]

They should all be replaced by AI at this point. 

[Toxn]

5 hours ago, Ulric said:

They should all be replaced by AI at this point. 

Ah, but who programs the AI? Because that person will be your king.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

Oh boy. #GunControl.

 

http://americangg.net/tb-gun-buy-back-suspect/

 

Gun sold to buy-back program found near dead suspect in police shooting

 

(image source; Court Files)

William Stewart Boyd traded his father’s old .38 caliber Smith & Wesson snub nose for less than $100 in a gun buy-back in 2004. It was supposed to be destroyed, but somehow the same handgun with serial number J515268 was found next to a dead body involved in a police shooting eight years later.

Boyd, a judge in Cook County, had taken the handgun to a South Side church in Chicago, Illinois where he handed it over to a pair of plainclothes officers with badges on their belts. “I’m doing the right thing,” he said in an interview with Chicago’s Sun Times, “and, in the process, someone didn’t do what they were supposed to do. That calls into question the process. What’s happening after you turn these weapons in?”

22-year-old Cesar A. Munive, a gang member convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, unlawful use of a weapon, and battery, was shot and killed by Cicero Officer Donald Garrity in July of 2012. Boyd’s old revolver was found laying next to Munive’s body after the shooting. Now Boyd and others want to know how it got there.

Officer Garrity is currently collecting a disability pension associated with PTSD and has a long history of disciplinary problems. Garrity has been under investigation for wielding a “high-powered rifle” during a traffic stop, threatening a fellow poilce officer, and was once pulled over for driving 90 mph in a 30 mph zone. He resigned from the Berwyn Police Department following multiple investigations and was hired by Cicero in 2012.

Munive’s family has accused Garrity of planting the handgun at the scene of the crime to justify his use of force. The family attorney said there were “plenty of warnings readily available to any reasonable police department that it was not safe to put a gun in the hands of such an unstable individual.” The city of Cicero is ready to pay Munive’s family $3.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit out of court. “No one would hire him except Cicero,” the attorney wrote in a court document.

Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi calls the revolver’s role in the shooting “extremely abnormal and troublesome.” In a formal statement to the press, Guglielmi said, “We are opening an internal affairs investigation today to trace this gun, verify that it was taken into police custody during a turn-in and investigate how it possibly ended up back on the street.”

[SergeantMatt]

24 minutes ago, Toxn said:

Ah, but who programs the AI? Because that person will be your king.

I'll do it, I guess. $10,000 and I'll make the AI give you a tax break.

[Donward]

12 minutes ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

Oh boy. #GunControl.

 

http://americangg.net/tb-gun-buy-back-suspect/

 

Gun sold to buy-back program found near dead suspect in police shooting

 

(image source; Court Files)

William Stewart Boyd traded his father’s old .38 caliber Smith & Wesson snub nose for less than $100 in a gun buy-back in 2004. It was supposed to be destroyed, but somehow the same handgun with serial number J515268 was found next to a dead body involved in a police shooting eight years later.

Boyd, a judge in Cook County, had taken the handgun to a South Side church in Chicago, Illinois where he handed it over to a pair of plainclothes officers with badges on their belts. “I’m doing the right thing,” he said in an interview with Chicago’s Sun Times, “and, in the process, someone didn’t do what they were supposed to do. That calls into question the process. What’s happening after you turn these weapons in?”

22-year-old Cesar A. Munive, a gang member convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, unlawful use of a weapon, and battery, was shot and killed by Cicero Officer Donald Garrity in July of 2012. Boyd’s old revolver was found laying next to Munive’s body after the shooting. Now Boyd and others want to know how it got there.

Officer Garrity is currently collecting a disability pension associated with PTSD and has a long history of disciplinary problems. Garrity has been under investigation for wielding a “high-powered rifle” during a traffic stop, threatening a fellow poilce officer, and was once pulled over for driving 90 mph in a 30 mph zone. He resigned from the Berwyn Police Department following multiple investigations and was hired by Cicero in 2012.

Munive’s family has accused Garrity of planting the handgun at the scene of the crime to justify his use of force. The family attorney said there were “plenty of warnings readily available to any reasonable police department that it was not safe to put a gun in the hands of such an unstable individual.” The city of Cicero is ready to pay Munive’s family $3.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit out of court. “No one would hire him except Cicero,” the attorney wrote in a court document.

Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi calls the revolver’s role in the shooting “extremely abnormal and troublesome.” In a formal statement to the press, Guglielmi said, “We are opening an internal affairs investigation today to trace this gun, verify that it was taken into police custody during a turn-in and investigate how it possibly ended up back on the street.”

 

So he was an idiot and traded in dad's near mint condition Smith & Wesson revolver for less than $100 and is surprised that a cop pocketed it?

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

These are the people who would be, for the most part, enforcing gun bans and confiscation.  

[Donward]

Bank of America to stop lending money to "military-style weapons makers"

 

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/banking-financial-institutions/382521-bank-of-america-will-stop-lending-to-assault

 

Boy, isn't Capitalism great?