What kind of firearms do you think you should legally be able to own? Should there be any limitations on how much or what kind of ammunition you can buy? What records should be kept of your purchases, and who should keep them? Under what circumstances should you be denied the right to purchase a firearm? Under what circumstances should your guns be confiscated?
I just want a sense of what people think is reasonable.
I’m a gun grabber. Most guns banned, especially handguns. You can keep your shotguns and standard .22 rifles, but they’re locked up at the local shooting place/hunting club. No limits on amount of ammo purchased, but tax it; ban soft-target ammunition, though, which has no purpose but to kill and maim humans. Not sure on the records of purchase, but it wouldn’t matter because of defacto disarmament. See above to the remaining questions.
Of course, the guns are only half (or a some odd percentage of the problem). We have a hyper-militaristic, individualist society with no familial or social support that’s under severe economic and mental stress…and swimming in guns.
You’ll never be able to ward off simultaneous attacks by a dozen ninjas with nothing but a shotgun and a .22 caliber rifle.
For the rural and country dwellers, maybe even remove any “lock yer guns at the armory!” type regulations. Iunno about ninjas or scary home invasions, but large and aggressive animals are a real threat in certain areas.
At this point, melt them all down. Anyone who resists gets a Hellfire missile down on their resistance place.
What was standard-issue weaponry for infantrymen in WWII? A handgun, and maybe a rifle with 10 or 15 rounds? Why do we need anything more than that? If it was good enough to take out Hitler, it should be good enough for any American who wants a gun today.
I don’t own any firearms currently.
I think you should be able to own just about any kind of light firearms short of machine guns but with restrictions on where they can be stored and fired.
Any type of semi-automatic weapon should be mandated to be kept stored at private or public shooting clubs/ranges. You would not have access to it except to use the range.
Perhaps ammo could be sold only at ranges by proprietors for use at the range. I’d restrict the amount of ammo one could purchase and stockpile.
Local law enforcement and firearms dealers should keep records of all sales.
Guns should be confiscated if you are considered a credible threat or danger to yourself or others or are under investigation for a crime. Such folks should also be prevented from purchasing guns.
This is probably the minimum extent of laws I’d be comfortable with right now.
I’m a law abiding citizen, and I don’t find anything harsh on this list.
Well, number 3 is pretty harsh. You did good with the first sentence, but one chamber, one bullet makes most hunting guns illegal.
But an excellent list.
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What’s the purpose of #1 except to be gratuitously annoying to the purchaser? Can you only buy one car a month? One TV? You would people to buy 12 guns a year, but not at one time, why?
#2, semi-automatic means you fire one round per trigger pull and the gun automatically reloads for the next shot. A revolver fires one round per trigger pull and the gun revolves the cylinder to reload for the next shot. I fail to see the difference. Semi-automatic is NOT a machine gun.
#3, why stop there? Why not require all guns to be single shot?
#4, yes a background check, no to a waiting period. I think you should have to have a physical with a doctor’s OK and a two week waiting period before you buy a Big Mac.
#5, absolutely agree with you.
I’m not sure about “should” – I suppose anything with a capacity over six shots could be outlawed without rational objection. I’d add on a Second Amendment rider – for every gun you own you owe the National Guard (i.e. militia) 4 years of service. I’d also add in a personal responsibility provision – if your gun is responsible for the death of an innocent human being then you spend the rest of your life as a guest of the people at a maximum security facility.
Why six? Why not single shot? Why not ban cartridges and make people pour powder down the barrel and ram a ball with a patch? No school massacre’s then.
I wouldn’t object to that, but then too, like I’ve said before, I don’t have a viable solution to the overall problem.
Fair enough.
I like my slingshot.
Be careful, you’ll put your eye out.
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I’d like to see guns treated like cars: Every gun registered, and a license required to operate one. That’s my idea of “well-regulated”. Why must we continue to cater to the paranoia of people who resist gun registration under the delusion that jackbooted government agents will come to confiscate their guns. Are our cars in danger of confiscation?
As long as it is legal to transfer gun ownership unreported, the black market will overflow with anonymous guns and gun violence will remain at elevated levels.
Zero guns – not even for the cops.
I think it would be “reasonable” to repeal the law that exempts gun manufacturers from liability.
They make and sell a product with the sole purpose of killing. Oh, excuse me, did I forget the mighty profit motive?
I agree – melt them all down. This is not a subject that I want to reason about. If we’re dealing with extremists who want to require guns in any situation, I’m taking the opposite extreme.
What kind of firearms do you think you should legally be able to own?
Rifle, such as a bolt action 1998 Mauser action with a clip that holds five rounds.
Double barrel shotgun. Holds 2 rounds
Pistol. A revolver. Holds 6 rounds
Should there be any limitations on how much or what kind of ammunition you can buy?
One can only purchase ammo for the type of weapons one owns.
What records should be kept of your purchases, and who should keep them?
If limited to the type weapons I listed above, I see no reason for any record keeping
Under what circumstances should you be denied the right to purchase a firearm?
Felon. Domestic abuser. Ever been in a mental institution.
Under what circumstances should your guns be confiscated?
Felon. Domestic abuser. Ever been in a mental institution.
This list is extremely pragmatic. I’m not that sympathetic to gun ownership, but hunting as an activity is an age old tradition.
I’d amend the list to be a bit more restrictive on possible purchasers and ban anyone who has been charged with 2 or more violent offenses, whatever the class of offense. And charged, not convicted. America’s legions of violent fucks need some possible incentive to behave.
America won’t ever ban guns, but we don’t have to live in an ocean of them, where there’s simply no limit to our gun-nuttery. That’s where we are today. And I see no likelihood that it will ever change.
I like your list but would broaden it to include all hunting rifles or shotguns, semi-automatic or not.
Also any but “assault” handguns, really.
Max capacity maybe 10 or 15 rounds, for the handguns.
OK with registration for a nominal fee, and also approve your restrictions.
I object to harassment of owners of such weapons, too, with unnecessary safety courses and draconian regulation of in-the-home safety.
Much as I object to GOP legislation aimed at harassing women seeking abortions or medical personnel involved in providing them.
Oh, all this would be easier if the conservatives on the court hadn’t abandoned their principled objections to incorporation to serve the gun-rights agenda of their base.
Reasonable? Any weapon built or designed prior to 1912 that can be carried more than 2 miles by a person who graduated from Marine Boot Camp within one year of the physical test.
All add-ons (cartridge extenders, multi-level magazines, etc.) must ALSO be designed prior to 1912.
Including gunpowder.
Make that 2012 and I’d agree.
make it 2012 and Aryan Brotherhood Texas would agree.
Just had to rec that one, Der Farm. You are right.
What kind of guns? Anything hand-held and using ammunition. No crew served weapons. No rocket launchers. No explosive shells.
Limits on purchases of huns or ammunition – no.
Records. Electronic database kept by FBI and shared with the states. The states can also keep their own if they want. Records of all purchases, sales and gifts.
Right denied to those convicted of violent crimes or mentally unstable (not sure how to classify that, we can argue). Guns confiscated if you are adjudged a violent risk by a court of law. Guns confiscated must be reimbursed at full retail value, not some arbitrary figure like $50.
I expect most of you think I drag my knuckles on the ground, but you asked my opinion.
I’d be OK with public ownership of single-shot rifles and shotguns, given safe storage requirements, registration, and background checks for all transfers and sales. Crimes and suicides are overwhelmingly performed with handguns while home defense and hunting are overwhelmingly with long guns. Multishot magazines are for mass murder. Everything else should be restricted to law enforcement and shooting ranges.
I think as a rule of thumb, people should be able to have access to same kinds of firearms and ammunition as law enforcement authorities have. I think a reasonable restriction could be magazine capacity limits and expansion of background checks to gun shows, however. That said, I am much more interested in focusing on limiting the kinds and amounts of armaments available to police and other law enforcement officials than on individual citizens. I mean, why is Homeland Security purchasing one billion bullets (?!), for example. When police arm up, gun enthusiasts want the same things — that’s why law enforcement magazines, whose readership are more often gun enthusiasts than cops, are filled with gun ads and articles.
There simply is not an epidemic of gun violence in this country, regardless of what President Obama might have said and even if such violence is higher than in most other countries. There is a violence problem in this country, but it is already being addressed. Gun violence, like all kinds of violence, is dramatically lower everywhere in US and has been trending down for years. It is now at the level it was in the 1960’s, after peaking in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in most states. Deaths due to rifles, including “assault” rifles such as the ones being proposed to be banned, kill many fewer people than knives. So banning rifles is especially problematic. Such a ban is likely to cause more death during the enforcement of it than would otherwise occur without such a ban. Remember, for example, that Waco, Texas was caused by the assault weapons ban and a foolish attempt to implement it, and Oklahoma City was caused by Waco, Texas.
The hunting issue is a also red herring. The real issue is rural self defense. Because of the distances involved, police response to rural home or property invasion can be an hour or more, effectively making it always an after-the-fact response. This is probably why the proportion of households that own guns is markedly similar to the proportion of rural households in the US, as is the distribution of political support for gun ownership.
It doesn’t really matter to gun owners if the odds of injury are greater from one’s own firearms because that presumes a counter-factual that lower present rural criminality would continue if rural people had fewer or less dangerous arms. People who live in rural areas do require the ability to defend themselves, if anything as deterrence. They should have the level of weaponry available to possible attackers, within reason. That level, I think, is pretty close to what police are using as firearms, which is why AR-15 style semi-automatic rifles should also be available to individuals.
Guns should be confiscated when the owner or user has demonstrated himself or herself to be dangerous and untrustworthy, such as through illegal use of violence of a given level or repetition, as is already the case in many places. But having been convicted of possessing marijuana should not be a cause for restricting weapons, for example.
This means that background checks expanded to gun shows are reasonable. But many states in the 1990’s already restricted gun possession for those convicted of domestic violence, but, disconcertingly to me, police organizations had the laws modified to allow the many police officers who have been convicted of domestic violence to still bear arms. So even background checks are likely to be limited in their effectiveness.
Current policy and laws are leading to a long term downward trend in violence, including gun violence. So any attempt to restrict guns further is likely to be only symbolic, meaning it won’t cause any lower violence levels but it may make it seem like “government is doing something.” As a general rule, symbolic politics may be necessary at times, but it should never be prioritized over legislation and policy change that can have real results for people, such a jobs, immigration, health care, civil rights, and other policy concerns where the actions of government are likely to have more real results. And symbolic policy should never actually cause more harm than would happen without it, and this, I believe, is the most likely outcome of the legislation that is being pushed in Congress now. Why? Because this is what happened with the last attempts at restrictions.
Obama was not elected to take on gun owners, and I’m not with him on this issue right now, even though I do appreciate his attempt to find common ground on the issue.
If we interpret the second amendment literally, as the SCOTUS does, ignoring the first clause and focusing solely on the second:
A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Then there should be no limitations whatsoever. Anti-aircraft missiles? Tell me where in that text it suggests that anti-aircraft missiles can be restricted. Nuclear weapons? Again, nothing in that text suggests that they can be restricted. Anthrax? Ditto.
Frankly I want someone to file such a lawsuit just to force the SCOTUS to come up with some rational for restricting types of weapons – because once they do that then one of two things happen.
First, if they rely on the well-regulated militia clause to reduce personal then they open the door to all kinds of restrictions. Second, if they don’t then they are inventing restrictions out of thin air – which admittedly the Scalia side does all the time but it’s good to be able to call them on it.
Alas, although that would be an interesting exercise it wouldn’t change anything. A simple reading of the 4th amendment tells you that:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
At this point it’s not clear how much value remains with this amendment after SCOTUS decisions the last 20 years. No, our SCOTUS is highly inconsistent. The Second Amendment shall have no exceptions but the Fourth Amendment has almost nothing but exceptions.
I like Wilderness’s idea only 1 shot guns, I can get on board with that especially if they’re only muzzle loading but I can compromise on that last part.
One .22 six-shooter pistol. One 20 gauge shotgun. One .22 rifle with 6-round capacity. Standard lead ammo, no cop-killer bullets or anything else beyond the traditional standard. Seizure and prosecution whenever nonconforming weapons are found.
Double the sentence for all crimes involving guns.