Intparent,
Why are you holding on to your guns if you don’t use them? And how much does your gun insurance cost?
I and others like me don’t want to try things that are expensive and obviously won’t work. A handgun ban and buy back is a trillion dollar venture.
People will strenuously object to my doing some math here but I’ll do it anyway. A trillion dollars today is worth about 40 billion a year in perpetuity in present value. I found data for 2010 pretty easily so using it, there were 6009 murders committed with a handgun in the US. So even if we implemented this, and said that we immediately end all murders with handguns in the US, then we’re spending 6.7 million dollars in present value for each life saved. And clearly a handgun ban and buy back isn’t going to immediately end all murders with handguns, especially not without an increase in murders by other means.
Also intparent, how did you get your guns? Is your name as a gun owner in a federal and state background check databank?
The idea that gun nuts are going to successfully rise up against a foreign power which is so overwhelmingly strong that it has defeated the US military? You don’t think that’s crazy?
Against a future US military weaker than the current, why not?
You’ve drunk the NRA Koolaid which makes you impervious to facts and reason.
How do you judge that without posting facts or reason to the contrary?
Maybe if the foreign power has the Walking Dead on its side as well.
I don’t have them insured against theft. Honestly, one reason I still own them is because I don’t want to sell them to someone who might store or use them irresponsibly. But you have not responded to the list of possible steps besides banning handguns that I made a few posts ago.
Hum…
I wonder what the Soviets in Afghanistan thought about those ragged little gun nuts that defeated them? Clear and away the second most powerful military in the world and they could not hold onto a little country, and lost a lot of men and money fighting there.
And I wonder what the American military thinks about the ragged little Taliban fighters who were so difficult to defeat, in the same country no less?
Let’s throw in the ragged little gun nuts of ISIS who seem to have no problem taking over half of entire countries all which have tanks, airplanes, and armored vehicles, while they themselves have none of those sophisticated weapons.
And examples of the rebels in Chile, Asia etc. are abound. All successful for decades with nothing but ragged little gun and a gun nut attitude.
Lots of projection going on here and defeatism before we start attitudes. Best to speak for yourself and not others you know nothing about, obviously. Not everybody has a “roll over and accept my defeat in advance” attitude; many have a gun nut “I want to live” attitude.
Just because a set of people cannot see themselves successfully defeating another better armed armed entity does not mean others are not capable of doing so.
A statement my Dad always used to tell business partners who told him something was not possible was, “Why are you trying to give me your limitations?” Then he would go out and accomplish, often 2X as big, exactly what the others failed to even try. This was partly why he decided to go out on his own and eventually bought all of them out. They just had no vision how to do the hard stuff that in the face of it did seem impossible.
Ah… then why are all the arguments made to try to reduce gun violence too hard, or deemed as unworkable? Or do you truly think there is no problem to solve?
I doubt a shotgun would be just as effective as a semi-automatic assault rifle in killing masses of people or Adam Lanza would have taken the shotgun into the elementary school instead of leaving it in the trunk of the car. The hunger for notoriety requires the piling up of bodies — hopefully more than the last mass shooter achieved ---- so Lanza brought in his mom’s Bushmaster XM assault rifle.
It worked really great. From the first shot at 9:35 a.m. (to bust through the door) and the last shot at 9:40 (his suicide), Lanza got off 154 shots and killed 20 first graders and six adults. I guess it’s just not that easy to rush a guy armed to the teeth (he carried a Glock semi automatic handgun and a Sig Sauer semiautomatic handgun) as well.
Would the shotgun have caused more suffering? Hard to say. There’s more of a splatter effect, so while, hit, some kids may have survived. And it’s slower to reload, so more may have been able to run out of the room. The speed and power of the Bushmaster is undeniable, though. Twenty kids in less than five minutes. Precision? He didn’t shoot them cleanly and singly so they could die quietly without pain or terror. There were kids pleading to be let go. There were kids shot mulitple times, pieces of their bodies blown off.
Taking the shotgun in there instead of the Bushmaster would have been a mercy compared to what was done to those kids.
What keeps additional gun control legislation from moving forward is that we don’t see the aftermath. We’re shielded from photos and film of what the first responders see when they walk into a classroom where 15 bullet-riddled first graders are piled on each other in a bathroom.
So…out of sight, out of mind. It didn’t happen to our kids so…meh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
Jazzymom, I specifically compared shotguns to handguns because handguns are what intparent wants banned while she owns two shotguns. Obviously, automatic weapons are more effective at killing than both shotguns and handguns. That was not being debated.
Does this mean you have liability insurance that covers your guns? You are being awfully coy. How much does it cost? I have it, so I’m curious what you pay since you want it mandated for all gun owners.
Also, intparent, did you submit to a federal and state background check? That’s also what you want mandated. Did you do it?
Bay:
That’s fine. I don’t believe we can ban handguns. My argument is to ban assault weapons without cosmetic loopholes and also high-capacity ammunition clips. Let’s debate that. If we are going to worry about potential terrorists swarming into the country shouldn’t we be concerned about the weapons they can obtain here?
Then how about a ban on automatics? Unlike shotguns, they are not useful for anything except mowing down large numbers of people quickly. Even Ronnie was on board with that.
x-posted jazzymom
Automatic weapons are already banned.
Vlad, the gun nut websites beg to differ.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/05/21/machine-guns-legal-practical-guide-full-auto/
Okay, so fully auto firearms that already existed in the US before 1986 aren’t outlawed, but no new ones can be made, imported, or modified from semiautos.