Playa says -- Yet this is twisting the conversation to a ban of all guns. That's not what some of us are calling for. A line has already been drawn on what's acceptable and not acceptable under our second amendment right to bear arms. That line already excludes fully-automatic guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, etc. All some of us are asking is for that line be drawn to also exclude 50-round magazines and drums. I think you'd agree that it's reasonable that Joe Schmoe can't run down to Walmart and buy a loaded rocket launcher. Why is it not reasonable to also say Joe Schmoe shouldn't be able to buy a 100-round drum? This is beyond the needs of home protection and instead just becomes a function of "you're taking away my rights." No, we're not taking away your rights to protect yourself as you have a full array of other guns to use for home protection. We're just asking for a reasonable solution that may help prevent these mass killings going forward.
(Dave says-- the guy in the theatre, his big mag jammed and he had to drop the AR and start in with the shotgun. In this one incident in which an actual HUGE magazine was used, the user was incompetent, the product was unreliable, and the size of the magazine turned out to be irrelevant. I would rather not ban something until it actually is effectively used in a crime. Holmes's attempt was the first I know of to use the big drum mag and it failed miserably. Most people cannot conceal the drum mag to carry it wherever they're going into a crowd. Those things are big and clumsy, and if you carry your gun with it attached you are carrying something impossible to even slightly conceal. If you carry it unattached, well it's not easy to get it attached, and you're ineffective. There's a REASON nobody uses big drum mags in mass killings. CLUMSY. Besides, most people don't have 'em and don't want 'em. It's the quintessential nonissue, the drum mag. As to the "rocket launchers" jazz, nobody's trying to buy them, nobody wants them, for defense against criminals or government or anything else. It's a red herring. People can't afford them, it takes more than one person to operate most of them (unless you're just going for one shot), and they can bring down airplanes, so they're not in the "personal weapon" class. Nobody's claiming the right to buy tanks, howitzers, Claymores or crates of C4. They're just protesting when the right to "keep and bear" arms (the "bear" proves it's personal weapons, not crew served rocket launchers or tanks or howitzers or missile batteries) is "infringed", meaning eaten away in small "reasonable" bits. Constitution says that can't be done, but half the country seems to want to infringe on these rights more with each passing highly publicized crime. The reason they made machine guns illegal in 1934 is pretty much down to Al Capone. There were gazillions of postwar Tommys in the hands of gangsters and they used 'em. The line WAS drawn by law. No more full auto without tight bg check, license fee, etc. And full auto is totally illegal to carry for any reason. For me, that's more than enough. The only weapons we allow are the ones that only fire once when you pull the trigger.
But the most important thing Playa said is "we're not taking away your rights to protect yourself"… and mentioned home protection. But we have a constitutional right and duty to be strong enough to overthrow a tyrannical government. It's in the Declaration. Letting people nibble away at magazine size and so forth is a trend, and one restriction begets another, especially if the rationale for each of them refuses to discuss the practical needs of the citizens in terms of protecting themselves from tyranny. Home defense is not the primary purpose of the second amendment. Preserving FREEDOM is. If it's necessary to the security of a free state (not a government, a PEOPLE) that we form up into a citizen army, carrying our own weapons, in order to fight for our freedom, even against our own government if they are out to take it, then we have the right to have and carry those weapons. Reduce it to "home defense against criminals" and all sorts of infringements on gun ownership make sense. I probably CAN defend my house with ten shots. But if a bunch of jackboots are heading down main street, and we the people organize to go and fight them to prevent them implementing unconstitutional laws and institutions in our town, well they are going to have 30 round mags. I think we should have them too. Anyone who says "aww, that will never happen, you're paranoid" simply knows too little about history, RECENT history. It happens a LOT. Just because it hasn't happened here, in our lifetimes, is NO assurance that it won't. This current crowd is philosophically different from past leaders. They are more like international leftists than American Democrats. They believe America is fundamentally wrong and has to be completely changed. They have no respect for the constitution and think gun owners are their enemies and must be dealt with. International leftists = Nazis, communists, authoritarians, totalitarians…. It's happened before in history (which is why it's IN the constitution) and it will happen again. Hell, the British were actually gunning down law abiding men in the street who were walking around carrying their rifles, backshooting them and taking the weapons to be destroyed. They'd do a "gun check" in town, saying you had to drop off your gun before you went about your business, and they'd just collect them and not give them back. They lied and stole and murdered for GUN CONTROL. They were dead set on disarming the colonies COMPLETELY and they acted brutally and tyrannically for decades to do it. This is why the second amendment is IN the constitution, because it's a RESPONSE to tyrannical gun control efforts. "it can't happen here, it can't get any worse than this", that's what the Lithuanian Jews were saying as they marched into the forest on "work details" and found themselves standing in front of mass graves with gun barrels behind them. Things like this are the NORM in history. America is the EXCEPTION, but has no guarantee that its exceptional status is permanent. No guarantee beyond the right, duty, and ABILITY of its people to keep it the way it is. Power tempts, elites become aristocrats who feel threatened by "the masses". Happens throughout history. When you say it's "twisting" the conversation to a ban of all guns, well that is usually where the Left wants to go, bit by bit, so each small change is "acceptable and reasonable", until they get the whole thing. The British handgun ban is total, not just the bigger magazines, ALL handguns. Rifles and shotguns are limited in capacity, and must be registered. If there is another mass shooting in Britain, using the permitted weapons, then they'll end up banning them too. It's the way of the left, incremental movement toward what was their goal all along. They are doing it here. This is just the beginning, this 30 round magazine thing, this registration thing.)
Poe says -- One of my accountant's husband is a police officer and obviously has a concealed carry permit. When he has to go into a place that doesn't permit guns, like a bar, he puts the gun under the front seat. Seems pretty unsafe to me. I also had a girlfriend in high school, more like a friend with benefits. Anyway, her father was a paranoid freak. He had gun's all around the house within arms reach at any place he would be. He had multiple guns in the car. In the glove box, under the seat and even one under the spare tire just in case he was kidnapped and put in the trunk. He was crazy, one reason I stopped seeing the girl. Anyway, he got his car broken into. Three guns gone. Two months later, car broken into again while he was in a bar. All three guns stolen that he replace gone. He didn't report any of them. Seems like there is a weak link in the legal/illegal gun ownership. Without registration of the guns, there's no use trying to hold people accountable. What is reasonable responsibility for gun owners to secure their guns? Registration?
(if he's a police officer, he already has rules and regulations that govern how he handles weapons and safes them, on and off duty. He ignored those rules as habit. More rules going to change his habits? Probably not. My guns in the car go in a steel key locked box under the seat that's chained to the seat post. The market already serves the needs of people to secure their guns by selling the means to do so. We just need to motivate them do do it properly, by punishing those whose guns are stolen and used in gun crimes. Dangerous property, high degree of responsibility for ownership. As to your paranoid guy, a responsible society needs to report him to authorities. You know about this high volume vanishing of guns under his care? How come you don't report him? That is probably grounds to redflag his next legal gun purchase.
But stolen guns are less of a problem in the criminal gun market than smuggled guns, which have come into this country by the millions over the past few decades. My wife was murdered by a man with a little black .32 from eastern europe, no serial number. Most of the guns kicking around south side Chicago didn't get stolen from bedroom communities, they got smuggled in and sold just like the drugs are smuggled in and sold, probably by the exact same people. Doesn't help when our own damned government sends thousands of ARs and AKs to drug cartels, either. I say let's make laws that put gun owners in jail when guns stolen from them are used in crimes. Depraved indifference to the deadly consequences of such a theft should have some stiff penalties, give people the chance to step up and do the right thing without creating a giant list of new rules and regulations and a giant new bureaucracy to blow through gazillions of tax dollars enforcing it. But this will do nothing to end the mass smuggling of guns to America by organized crime, druggers, etc. That is the primary source of criminal weapons. It will still be there, even under the must restrictive of gun laws. Horse out of barn now, can't put toothpaste back in tube, etc. Anyone wanting guns will find a way to get them. There are too many in America now, hundreds of millions, and actual round-up style confiscation would turn the nation into a battleground, squads of jackboots getting in shootouts with both criminals and with citizens who rightly believe their constitutional rights are being violently taken from them. There will always be guns available to those who want to use them for bad purposes. That is a good reason not to disarm the good guys. No matter what the legislators do, we will always NEED good guys with guns. There are approximately two MILLION defensive gun uses each year, according to the National Institute of Justice. Between those attempted crimes and the ones NOT committed out of fear of armed victims, imagine what this whole country would look like if citizens were disarmed and everyone knew it. A crime wave that would make Albania look like the Vatican. )
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