Carolyn McCarthy readies gun control bill

[bbarrick8383]

That’s true, but it’s a direct consequence of a legal climate in which guns are so loosely regulated and so prolific that an adequate supply readily sloshes over into the illegal market. Yes, we could buy a Glock in the “hood” quite easily. However, unless your “hood” happens to be tribal Pakistan, you can’t buy an RPG or a Stinger missile out of the back of a van. That’s not because the thugs have a different reverence for those laws, but because the legal distribution is so limited that black market spillover is low to negligible. Even putting out the word to buy such weapons almost always lands you a meeting not with a real arms dealer, but an ATF agent who will throw you away in the federal pen for decades.

So I don’t suggest that a tight regime would eliminate Glocks from the street, but it would mean that the price would go from, say, $500 to $5,000. There would be far fewer for sale at any given moment, the sorts of criminals with contacts and money to get them would be much more limited, and those crooks would, on average, be much more judicious about using them than schizophrenics or kids who drive down the street holding their “gat” sideways and spraying bullets on a crowded sidewalk because some other idiot “dissed” them.

There’s hardly a market here anyone looking to blow up troops in armored vehicles.

When people want to do that, they fill a van full of fertilizer and park it outside a building. Much more effective for the insane than a RPG.

BTW, there are people in the middle east, who sit all day with a hammer and forge and make pistols. So, if a Glock goes from 500 to 5,000, a new “Glock” will show up to take it’s place.

This reminds me of the scene in office space when they were discussing how stupid criminals get away with money laundering, then I think they had to look up money laundering in the dictionary.

Some criminals, stupid as they may be, are brilliant at being a criminal.

 

[Stjudeprayforus]

Could you explain why that plan has not worked in Mexico? Their laws are much more stringent and the punishment much more sever that the US’s but they are overrun with weapons and shootings.

Imagine the flow of guns that cross our border daily. (along with drugs and human smuggling)

And left says price guns and ammo to the roof for law abiding citizens and dont close the boarder.

Taking rights away from law abiding citizens is the first instinct of the left.

Boehner announced he will not let gun control go to the floor of the house. Can you imagine the rights that would be taken away if Pelosi was still in charge…? shudder.

 

[kenofken]

Could you explain why that plan has not worked in Mexico? Their laws are much more stringent and the punishment much more sever that the US’s but they are overrun with weapons and shootings.

Mexico has never had the cultural or institutional infrastructure to enforce laws, at least in recent times. Much of that has to do with our foolish drug war which has given thugs the right to print money, basically. Mexico has never had a true class of well-paid, carefully recruited law enforcement and civil service backed by a general public support of the rule of law. It is a system which has always been much more pliable to bribery than our own. You can’t enforce any sort of law in a system where a couple hundred bucks can make a felony charge go away.

More recently, the money and armament of drug gangs has allowed them to intimidate and kill police and prosecturos with absolute impunity. Gun laws don’t work there because Mexico is, in all but name, a failed state not so far different than Somalia, or Afghanistan, where there is a government with nominal control, at best. It is also due to that “spillover” effect I mentioned earlier. Our supply chains of legitimate guns in this country is so awash in weapons that diverting them to Mexico for large cash and or drugs is child’s play.

Laws by themselves don’t solve anything. I just happen to think there are some intelligent solutions that lay between the mess we have now and total bans of personal gun ownership. I think it’s entirely possible to safeguard our rights to self defense and sporting needs while creating a regulatory regime which at least puts military grade hardware out of the easiest reach of street punks and psychos. I won’t tell you I have the magic formula for exactly how to do it, but I believe it lies in some good thinking somewhere between the NRA and the liberal “let’s ban all guns” crowd.

I think part of the solution relative to Mexico, and our own streets, is decriminalizing drugs. Our current drug laws are enabling guys who used to be carjackers and hub cap thieves to amass the money and power to destroy nation states! Our current gun laws make it pathetically easy for nutjobs and low-level street scum to murder busloads of people at whim. I harbor no delusions that we can put guns out of reach for criminals, but I know we can make the high end stuff just expensive and rare enough that the bottom feeders won’t have universal access to it. Personally I could very easily live with at 10-round limit for most civilian access. If I truly can’t get by with 10 rounds for my self defense needs, it’s time for me to change profession or move.

 

[kenofken]

There’s hardly a market here anyone looking to blow up troops in armored vehicles.

When people want to do that, they fill a van full of fertilizer and park it outside a building. Much more effective for the insane than a RPG.

BTW, there are people in the middle east, who sit all day with a hammer and forge and make pistols. So, if a Glock goes from 500 to 5,000, a new “Glock” will show up to take it’s place.

This reminds me of the scene in office space when they were discussing how stupid criminals get away with money laundering, then I think they had to look up money laundering in the dictionary.

Some criminals, stupid as they may be, are brilliant at being a criminal.

The fertilizer comment illustrates my point. In the old days, anybody wearing a Carhardt could buy the stuff by the sackful in any supply depot in farm country if they knew how to ask for it. These days if you’re buying ammonium nitrate, you damn sure better be able to show that you’re spreading it on a field someplace. It’s not an airtight system. If you had lots of patience and sophistication and contacts, you could divert enough to make trouble, but the regs are good enough that your average screwhead isn’t going to be able to pull off another Oklahoma City.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Personally I could very easily live with at 10-round limit for most civilian access. If I truly can’t get by with 10 rounds for my self defense needs, it’s time for me to change profession or move.

Indeed. A writer in one of the monthy gun magazines, who favored the Colt .45, scoffed at those who were enamored of pistols with a 14 round magazine, “If you need 14 rounds, you’re not defending your home, you’re in a firefight.”

 

[bbarrick8383]

Personally I could very easily live with at 10-round limit for most civilian access. If I truly can’t get by with 10 rounds for my self defense needs, it’s time for me to change profession or move.

This is what you need to understand though.

A week of practice with today’s technology and you can do with 3 10 round clips in almost the same amount of time that you can with 1 30 round clip.

Even revolvers have speed loaders, and it may take a split second longer to reload that revolver, but with practice even a revolver can pump out 30 rounds in the blink of an eye.

 

[kenofken]

Indeed. A writer in one of the monthy gun magazines, who favored the Colt .45, scoffed at those who were enamored of pistols with a 14 round magazine, “If you need 14 rounds, you’re not defending your home, you’re in a firefight.”

Those fat double stacked mags have generally become a substitute for learning how to shoot straight. The current theory among criminals and sadly among some of the self-defense crowd is just to put a curtain of lead in the air and your bound to hit your oppoent. If you happen to mow down a few mothers and kids nearby, well, that’s their problem.

Another fact which seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle: the only war we’ve won in the last two generations was won by guys with 8-round clips! If that was good enough to defeat one of the most highly trained and aggressive armies in history, I like to think I can squeak by with that against the odd crankhead who pries into my home at 1 a.m.!

 

[Suudy]

I’m all about the Second Amendment, but there’s something about 30-round semiautomatics which just doesn’t square with my understanding of any legitimate self-defense or sporting need.

The argument, as I understand it, is that 2nd amendment rights are about hunting, self-defense, or sporting needs. It is about keeping the people in a position that they are capable of defending themselves against threats, foreign and domestic. Now, I know that the argument is “that is why we have a professional military”, but the pro-2nd amendment folk believe the militia is more than just those on active duty. These other functions–hunting, self-defense, sporting needs–are secondary to the national defense function.

 

[bbarrick8383]

If you happen to mow down a few mothers and kids nearby, well, that’s their problem.

No need for this kind if BS.

Another fact which seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle: the only war we’ve won in the last two generations was won by guys with 8-round clips! If that was good enough to defeat one of the most highly trained and aggressive armies in history, I like to think I can squeak by with that against the odd crankhead who pries into my home at 1 a.m.!

Yes, well if they only fought with rifles, you might have a point.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

The argument, as I understand it, is that 2nd amendment rights are about hunting, self-defense, or sporting needs. It is about keeping the people in a position that they are capable of defending themselves against threats, foreign and domestic. Now, I know that the argument is “that is why we have a professional military”, but the pro-2nd amendment folk believe the militia is more than just those on active duty. These other functions–hunting, self-defense, sporting needs–are secondary to the national defense function.

An unregulated, unsupervised, and unaccountable “militia” is not what our founders had in mind and it is itself a domestic threat.

 

[kenofken]

This is what you need to understand though.

A week of practice with today’s technology and you can do with 3 10 round clips in almost the same amount of time that you can with 1 30 round clip.

Even revolvers have speed loaders, and it may take a split second longer to reload that revolver, but with practice even a revolver can pump out 30 rounds in the blink of an eye.

It’s not a perfect solution to be sure. The answer might lie in fixed magazines like they have in an SKS or the old mausers. It’s true that a determined gunman can find all sorts of ways around the problem. Even if we limit it to wheelguns, he could stuff six of them in his belt or bookbag. Practice also brings speed, but many of these nuts that commit mass shootings have never even fired the weapon before they day of the massacre, or maybe put one box through it at the range the day the bought it. I suspect that any change that would buy even tens of seconds would save a lot of lives simply by giving people a chance to react and run out of easy point blank of the shooter. With a 30-rounder, by the time people can even register that something’s wrong, everyone within 30 feet of the shooter is dead or disabled for life. If we can do nothing else, perhaps we can give people at least the same sporting chance to survive that we grant game animals.

 

[kenofken]

The argument, as I understand it, is that 2nd amendment rights are about hunting, self-defense, or sporting needs. It is about keeping the people in a position that they are capable of defending themselves against threats, foreign and domestic. Now, I know that the argument is “that is why we have a professional military”, but the pro-2nd amendment folk believe the militia is more than just those on active duty. These other functions–hunting, self-defense, sporting needs–are secondary to the national defense function.

I get that too, but that poses an even thornier problem. 30-round Glocks and even semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 and AK-series guns are really only good for murdering soft targets ie civilians. They cannot even begin to serve as an adequate deterrence against any modern professional military. If God forbid our own military turned on us, taking them on with anything we have on the civilian market would just be an awful one-sided slaughter. It would look like the British mowing down the Zulus. Handguns won’t even put a dimple in their body armor.

Look at the current wars we’re fighting. Not to make light of the guys killed by snipers and in firefights, but on a macro scale, we consider small arms to be a nuisance, at best. The only serious threat to a modern army from irregulars comes from much heavier gear, and increasingly, from IEDs. If the Second Amendment is really about arming us against our own people, we’ve got problems on several levels. We then need to let people buy large quantities of high explosives, anti-aircraft capability, artillery and maybe even chemical weapons and the latest generation fighter jets. Even if we can begin to countenance that level of madness, most neighborhood militias don’t have a few hundred billion dollars sitting around to build that kind of balance of power.

 

[Suudy]

An unregulated, unsupervised, and unaccountable “militia” is not what our founders had in mind and it is itself a domestic threat.

I’m not aware of any mainstream 2nd amendment group advocating “unregulated, unsupervised, and unaccountable” militias being formed. Rather, it is about the people already being armed and capable of being put together into those regulated, supervised, and accountable militias. The bit of literature I’ve seen is that the people, if necessary, should be capable of forming themselves into the appropriate militias without the government, such as when the government is either incapable or unwilling to provide for the common defense. The goal is to eliminate any dependence upon the government and keep the power with the people. And that goal seems in keeping with the founding fathers.

 

[Suudy]

I get that too, but that poses an even thornier problem. 30-round Glocks and even semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 and AK-series guns are really only good for murdering soft targets ie civilians. They cannot even begin to serve as an adequate deterrence against any modern professional military. If God forbid our own military turned on us, taking them on with anything we have on the civilian market would just be an awful one-sided slaughter. It would look like the British mowing down the Zulus. Handguns won’t even put a dimple in their body armor.

The respectable parties that promote this line don’t think of it in terms of defense against our own army, but a foreign invading one. These kinds of weapons are, I agree, useless on a macro scale. But when combined with our own professional military, can provide an edge. That is what I think the argument is.

If the Second Amendment is really about arming us against our own people, we’ve got problems on several levels.

Whoa, slow down there chief. I never suggested such a thing, and no mainstream pro-2nd amendment group suggests such a thing. The largest and most influential group, the NRA, has never advocated a position of individual armament for the purposes of fighting our own government. Only the fringies think this.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I get that too, but that poses an even thornier problem. 30-round Glocks and even semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 and AK-series guns are really only good for murdering soft targets ie civilians. They cannot even begin to serve as an adequate deterrence against any modern professional military. If God forbid our own military turned on us, taking them on with anything we have on the civilian market would just be an awful one-sided slaughter. It would look like the British mowing down the Zulus. Handguns won’t even put a dimple in their body armor.

Look at the current wars we’re fighting. Not to make light of the guys killed by snipers and in firefights, but on a macro scale, we consider small arms to be a nuisance, at best. The only serious threat to a modern army from irregulars comes from much heavier gear, and increasingly, from IEDs. If the Second Amendment is really about arming us against our own people, we’ve got problems on several levels. We then need to let people buy large quantities of high explosives, anti-aircraft capability, artillery and maybe even chemical weapons and the latest generation fighter jets. Even if we can begin to countenance that level of madness, most neighborhood militias don’t have a few hundred billion dollars sitting around to build that kind of balance of power.

I think one has to look at the big picture. If anyone were to start organizing civilians against the government, there would have to have been some major political battles first. Then using the current major division in the population of conservatives vs. liberals, one would have to assume that the fight would be between those two ideologies and one would have the government on it’s side while the other would not.

Our federal/state governments have reserve and national guard centers in every state. These things have everything from fully automatic SAW’s to aircraft. They are not very well defended to my knowledge, at least the local ones are not from what I can tell. And a small group of poorly armed civilians could easily take everything they have without much of a fight, if they had the element of surprise.

There’s a lot more to take in rather than civilians vs. military. Texas has it’s own militia it can call up at any time. Texas has a large economy that could form allies and provide all sorts of weapons if they wanted to.

It’s something I hope we never see happen, but to simplify it to .45’s and shotguns vs. Apache’s would not be very wise imo.

 

[Raskolnikov]

The respectable parties that promote this line don’t think of it in terms of defense against our own army, but a foreign invading one. These kinds of weapons are, I agree, useless on a macro scale. But when combined with our own professional military, can provide an edge. That is what I think the argument is…

I honestly don’t think whatever edge might be gained would be significant enough to make it worthwhile to put civilians at risk. If a foreign military successfully invades the US, it will most likely a fairly sophisticated militaryl, and rag-tag, barely trained infantry (militia) would be useless against artillery, armour, and most importantly, aircraft. When civilian militias engange modern 20th or 21st century militaries, casualty rations are just horrific, and probably not worth it. Furthermore, widespread civilian gun ownership is far from necessary for an effective civilian militia. One need only look at the German civilian forces who fought at the end of WW2 with only cursory training when most of the soldiers were dead, wounded, or in prison camps. Children were trained to use panzerschrecks and were surprisingly effective at taking out Russian tanks in the battle of Berlin. Before the war Germany had strict gun laws. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to me that widespread civilian ownership of firearms would either be either necessary or particularly useful in any national defense situation. Personally, i don’t much mind being dependent on the government for national defense. Priviate military organizations are generally (in my opinion) either useless or potentially dangerous.

 

[Suudy]

I honestly don’t think whatever edge might be gained would be significant enough to make it worthwhile to put civilians at risk. If a foreign military successfully invades the US, it will most likely a fairly sophisticated militaryl, and rag-tag, barely trained infantry (militia) would be useless against artillery, armour, and most importantly, aircraft. When civilian militias engange modern 20th or 21st century militaries, casualty rations are just horrific, and probably not worth it. Furthermore, widespread civilian gun ownership is far from necessary for an effective civilian militia. One need only look at the German civilian forces who fought at the end of WW2 with only cursory training when most of the soldiers were dead, wounded, or in prison camps. Children were trained to use panzerschrecks and were surprisingly effective at taking out Russian tanks in the battle of Berlin. Before the war Germany had strict gun laws. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to me that widespread civilian ownership of firearms would either be either necessary or particularly useful in any national defense situation. Personally, i don’t much mind being dependent on the government for national defense. Priviate military organizations are generally (in my opinion) either useless or potentially dangerous.

My point was that I think the mindset of our founding fathers was in this regard. While we may have a standing army, gun owning civilians can be added when necessary. It was effective then (not all the revolutionaries were professional soldiers), hence their desire to keep the populace armed. This is what I think the 2nd amendment groups are appealing to.

And remember that during the revolution, many of our leaders were professional soldiers (think G. Washington during the Seven Years War). Were it to degenerate to a fight against our own government (which nobody respectable is advocating), there would likely be professional soldiers joining the insurrectionists. It isn’t inconceivable that it would be like the revolutionary war in terms of ability if stateside bases were to join any insurrection. Please note, I am not advocating such a thing. But it is part of the mindset of those who do think we should keep the civilian population armed.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

My point was that I think the mindset of our founding fathers was in this regard. While we may have a standing army, gun owning civilians can be added when necessary.

The National Guard fills the role of the traditional militia.

It was effective then (not all the revolutionaries were professional soldiers), hence their desire to keep the populace armed. This is what I think the 2nd amendment groups are appealing to.

It was effective because experienced and educated government hired officers taught people how to fight a war and because the government regulated the militia. It’s not like a bunch of random people simply popped out of the woodwork, grabbed guns, gathered on a field, and singlehandedly defeated the British. I also highly doubt that the founders would be in favor of allowing private citizens to possess weapons of mass murder like automatic weapons with 30 round clips.

 

[Suudy]

The National Guard fills the role of the traditional militia.

Not in the same sense that the pro-2nd amendment people advocate. The National Guard owns the weapons, not the people.

It was effective because experienced and educated government hired officers taught people how to fight a war and because the government regulated the militia. It’s not like a bunch of random people simply popped out of the woodwork, grabbed guns, gathered on a field, and singlehandedly defeated the British.

I didn’t suggest that was the case. The distinction, though, was those people brought their own weapons. That is what the pro-2nd amendment people are talking about. Further, those average infantry were trained by those who chose to fight for the revolution. Note that there wasn’t a trained military prior to the declaration of independence and the start of hostilities.

I also highly doubt that the founders would be in favor of allowing private citizens to possess weapons of mass murder like automatic weapons with 30 round clips.

Are you sure? Private citizens of the time did own state of the art weapons.

 

[ProVobis]

“Crazy” kills more people than guns. How about working on that?

Politicians are prone to being crazy as well. I’d start with them.