<p>Thank you, Tom. Exactly. At what point do the government regulators stay out of my business? I already have to have a background check to purchase a gun, I have to take a course to carry it, I am limited on the type of firearm I can buy, and I have to know and understand the various laws of transport from state to state, because that’s limited and regulated too. I consider these to be more than reasonable restraints for a law abiding citizen.</p>
<p>Of course, there is a growing willingness to suggest that our constitution has out lived it’s relevance and should simply be set aside in some surprising quarters of late.</p>
<p>I could imagine this gun control debate morphing into a larger constitutional relevance debate.</p>
<p>“When I ask them how they feel about violence in film and video games, mental health policies and resources --”</p>
<p>They watch violent movies and play violent video games in the UK, Australia, Japan, etc., etc., etc…and yet have nowhere near the problem we have here. </p>
<p>As for mental health policies - I’m not 100% sure but since all those countries have universal health care - it is likely not nearly the burden on a family to get needed services for a mentally ill family member. </p>
<p>For some reason, on a whole host of issues, our country refuses to look at successful solutions other countries have taken to confront these universal problems. We continually just stick our heads in the sand and say, “we can’t do that here.”</p>
<p>“I think we have at our root a much more individualistic and more violent culture than these nations that the gun control advocates are so set on comparing us to.”</p>
<p>Nonsense. Look at the history of Australia, for example, or Japan and their historically violent culture.</p>
<p>“Should I be responsible if someone steals a steak knife from my home and kills someone with it? How would a national registry stop these types of attacks?”</p>
<p>Knives have other purposes. Guns have one purpose - to kill something.</p>
<p>I’m not a big fan of looking at what other countries have “done.” Frequently these same countries have other things they are “doing,” as well. For example, women’s reproductive freedom is not clear in Australia. Japan has a culture of child sex exploitation that is barely even addressed, not to mention the sexism inherent in their corporate and social structures.</p>
<p>So, I’m not really interested in being lectured to by the British when if it weren’t for us and our gun freedoms, they might very well still be a monarchy. It is easy to forget that most places do not have the freedoms we have and it is easy to act as if we have been around “forever” when we are a very young country and the types of freedoms we have now are still in what anyone would consider an experimental phase, when compared with the history of man.</p>
<p>I also get pretty sick of the heavy handed name calling rhetoric on both sides of the issue. People who believe in the right to bear arms, whichever arms, are not “gun nuts,” they are Americans who have every right to speak and to be heard. If you live on the border between the US and our southern Neighbors, you might actually even NEED these types of weapons to defend your property. Property is a fundamental right in this country.</p>
<p>So, talking about how we could regulate for safety without diminishing responsible gun ownership, and talking about this in a civil way, makes sense to me. If you live in the middle of grizzly bear country, you might want an assault weapon to defend yourself. Don’t tell me you shouldn’t live in the middle of grizzly bear country since the same people who want to get rid of guns want to reintroduce and protect grizzlies. </p>
<p>There are actual reasons people need these weapons. So, if you live in NYC, then fine, your insurance should be very, very high. But, if you live on the border, or if you live on the edge of Yellowstone? Perhaps your insurance should be lower.</p>
<p>There are ways to do this without calling people who care about this “nuts.”</p>
<p>That is not true. There are many people that use guns for various types of target or skeet shooting</p>
<p>* Nonsense. Look at the history of Australia, for example, or Japan and their historically violent culture.*</p>
<p>Different by a lot. Australia did not wage a violent and long fought revolution for its independence. Japan? Yes, there is a a very strong culture of violence but it was not unsettled frontier where immigrants went to hack out a living from wilderness.</p>
<p>It must be a horrible emotional burden to go through life convinced that at any moment someone might break into your home and shoot you for no reason, that at any minute the “government” might swoop in and take your stuff, that one must be ever vigilant because someone out there might be out to get you. And that only your guns can save you.</p>
<p>The parents who actually have reason to worry about stray bullets hitting them or their children while they sit on their front stoops are not the people worrying about their second ammendment rights being violated by gun regulations. It seems to be people who have no experience with in your face crime at your doorstep who have the loudest voices.</p>
<p>And how much ammunition is a “subsistance hunter in Appalachia” running through, anyway? Shotguns and shot gun shells for birds and small game aren’t a part of anyone’s fears, here. And a deer’s meat goes a long way. Nobody is out there shooting a deer a day, or a deer a week. Sheesh! How many people are still living in 1932?</p>
<p>“That is not true. There are many people that use guns for various types of target or skeet shooting.”</p>
<p>Fine, they can keep their guns and the amno needed for these sports locked away at the gun club.</p>
<p>Well, a big part of the problem with denigrating the views of those who do not live in these tightly compacted urban areas is that America is not only comprised of these tightly compacted urban areas. And, you can’t make rules for those in the country based on what a percentage in the city might need any more than you can make rules for those in the city based on what those in the wilderness need.</p>
<p>America has borders and wilderness and small towns and unpopulated farm areas, and not only big urban areas. There has to be some respect for that in the dialogue.</p>
<p>Well said, poetgirl.</p>
<p>Emilybee, I prefer to keep my belongings with me and to preserve the intent of the constitution. Perhaps there are some of YOUR constitutional rights you are willing to forfeit, but you don’t speak for all.</p>
<p>What, exactly, is happening in the small towns, farms and wilderness areas of this country that require large clips/magazines and semiautomatic weapons to be dealt with?</p>
<p>Have the deer run amok?</p>
<p>Zombie bear? </p>
<p>Rabid wolves?</p>
<p>“Different by a lot. Australia did not wage a violent and long fought revolution for its independence. Japan? Yes, there is a a very strong culture of violence but it was not unsettled frontier where immigrants went to hack out a living from wilderness.”</p>
<p>But the fact is both these cultures have a violent history and violent people - regardless of the specific circumstances - and both have instituted strict gun gun control law. Obviously, no two countries are3 going to have identical histories. </p>
<p>The French fought a violent revolution and they don’t have a problem with gun violence like we do, either.</p>
<p>“Emilybee, I prefer to keep my belongings with me and to preserve the intent of the constitution. Perhaps there are some of YOUR constitutional rights you are willing to forfeit, but you don’t speak for all.”</p>
<p>I really don’t have a problem with that until people bring up idiotic things like having steak knives are equivalent to possessing a gun.</p>
<p>unless you are marching for your right to own surface-to-air shoulder missile launchers, or small nuclear weapons, you have already conceded some limitations to that right.</p>
<p>I don’t see the ACLU out campaigning against the “shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater” ban, either.</p>
<p>eastcoastcrazy, I’m not a gun advocate, but I am an advocate of freedom. You can attempt to position me as unreasonable, but I’m not unreasonable, not on any level. And, frankly, I think the idea that people “don’t need” things is a really BAD reason to start telling them what they can and cannot have. I don’t want the government to tell me what to do with my body, not my reproductive freedom and not how much salt or soda I can have, either. It’s not their business. And I don’t want them to tell me what kind of car to drive or what kind of heater to have inside my house, either.</p>
<p>I believe we can regulate and create liability for these things, but I do not believe we can continue down this path of taking freedoms from people and remain free.</p>
<p>I don’t think half the stuff the government does these days has anything to do with what they ought to be doing. But, I will say this, if you believe you can never have your freedom taken from you in a civilized country? You should look at the history of the world some time.</p>
<p>take care.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably because that ban doesn’t actually exist.</p>
<p>Riflery is an NCAA sport, and MIT has historically been really good at it; just as an aside.</p>
<p>"In the late 60’s, most of the boys in my 6th or 7th grade class took gun safety and left their guns (shotgun/rifle) leaning in the corner of the cloak room until after school. Since the course was taught by a teacher, I assume that he also had a gun at school.</p>
<p>Almost everyone we knew had easy access to a hunting gun & ammo. All we had to do was break the cheap glass in dad or grandpa’s gun cabinet. We wouldn’t even think of doing so. I am not opposed to gun safety being taught at school (to both students and teachers. I’d rather have my kids familiar with handling guns in case of an emergency or if they stumbled upon one at a friends house."</p>
<p>There has been such a shift in our culture, overall, over the past 30 years. I remember as a kid that all the boys in high school had gun racks in their trucks, often with guns on the racks."</p>
<p>Thank god there’s been a shift in our culture! I’d be embarrassed to say that was my culture. Yee-haw.</p>