Crowning Trump king

Not MY Miata! (It's too much fun.)

Ken S wrote: Gun control: We need some reasonable measures of gun control. I understand that the solution to the mass shooting problem we have in the U.S. will require more than just gun control, but I do believe gun control is a part of the answer.

[Emphasis above mine.]

I hear that from a lot of people, but I don’t think the facts bear out that gun ownership is the issue. As an official old guy, I can remember when schools had gun clubs (I was in the club in my school), teachers had guns in their glove boxes, and even some students drove to school with guns in the back windows of their pickups, both of which happened at my school. Hardly any school shootings in the 70’s as compared with today. None at my school. Also, per-household U.S. gun ownership was 43% in 1972 (as recently as 2020, it was only 42%, I just looked it up), and yet the crime rate with guns is now higher.

What changed? It’s not the availability of guns. The root problem clearly lies elsewhere. If you believe that gun control is part of the answer to today’s problem, you’re giving up on identifying and fixing the actual problem, or worse, you know what the problem is, but would rather put your effort elsewhere.

Up until the continuing revelations of the Biden-family corruption since the Obama administration, I might have believed that President Biden had more character than Trump. I no longer believe that, and in every other way Biden (to my way of thinking) is way worse. And the fact that President Obama himself was not thrilled about the idea of a Biden presidency just helps seal my thinking. I’d prefer to vote for a candidate close to my views other than Trump next election, but absolutely nothing will cause me to believe that Biden would be a better choice than Trump.

P.S. I also drive a small convertible that I have no intention of giving up, internal combustion engine and all!

dcbii wrote: What changed? It’s not the availability of guns. The root problem clearly lies elsewhere. If you believe that gun control is part of the answer to today’s problem, you’re giving up on identifying and fixing the actual problem, or worse, you know what the problem is, but would rather put your effort elsewhere.

What changed is that there is now a rising number of people in our society who cannot be trusted to handle certain firearms responsibly. These specific firearms are used in the majority of "mass casualty" events specifically because of their design features. Therefore, we must limit access to these firearms for certain segments of our society.

More specifically, I would restrict access to AR-style rifles to people who are 25+ or classify them under the same category as silencers, machine guns, etc., which requires a special license to purchase. I would hold both children and parents equally accountable for anything their underage children do with firearms. I would limit magazine capacity as well.

It's worth noting that the overall murder rate in the U.S. is about a third lower than it was in 1990. It was almost 50% down until the suppression of the police allowed it to rise post-Michael Brown.

So a "growing" portion of Americans not responsible enough to handle firearms? Not really. We do have a growing portion of serious criminals who are not apprehended and put in prison, though. Maybe instead of penalizing the law-abiding, let's try actually punishing people for serious assaults, rape, murder, and the like.

Another point of reference is that what the left/gun controllers call "assault weapons" are not at all akin to fully automatic weapons. They fire one round each time the trigger is pulled, just like my Marlin .22.

Bert Perry wrote: So a "growing" portion of Americans not responsible enough to handle firearms? Not really. We do have a growing portion of serious criminals who are not apprehended and put in prison, though. Maybe instead of penalizing the law-abiding, let's try actually punishing people for serious assaults, rape, murder, and the like.

Bert, convicted criminals are not the ones involved in mass casualty events. From what I understand, almost all of the mass casualty events are caused by someone without a criminal record. So, your comment is really irrelevant.

Bert Perry wrote: Another point of reference is that what the left/gun controllers call "assault weapons" are not at all akin to fully automatic weapons. They fire one round each time the trigger is pulled, just like my Marlin .22.

I did not call the AR-style rifle an assault weapon. I understand the difference between semi-auto and automatic weapons. I own to semi-auto handguns. That being said, the weapon of choice for mass casualty events is the AR-style rifle, with large magazine capacity. And .223 ammo will do significantly more damage than .22 ammo. They need to be made unavailable to people under 25 and/or severely restricted by classifying them on the NFA list.

Can you still buy / own one? Yes, but you have to go through a class III dealer, fill out the paperwork, get fingerprinted, pay the tax, etc.

It's worth noting that the overall murder rate in the U.S. is about a third lower than it was in 1990. It was almost 50% down until the suppression of the police allowed it to rise post-Michael Brown.

I know this is a side-track issue, but there are many variables for why murder rates have gone up than the one single cause like the Ferguson Effect that you seem to be implying. As someone who was trained in statistical analysis and has written several crime-prevention grants in my line of work, (part of my job includes analyzing data on crime, poverty, race, and family/fatherlessness), I know the data and how it is manipulated by political and social commentators on both the left and the right. And Heather MacDonald (who popularized the Ferguson Effect) is among the worst. Her book, "War on Cops" is one of the worst sourced books I've read in the past decade (only 8 footnotes in the entire book) and simply a badly written book on criminal justice and policing that cherry picks the data to back up her flawed theories of criminology and policing. I'm not saying that in certain cities in America that the Ferguson Effect hasn't contributed to a higher murder rate because of the suppression of police, and that in certain far-left cities it is the main cause (Portland comes to mind), but to broad-brush it as the unifying cause of America's rising murder rate is simply not accurate.

The last time I checked, total murders with all long guns--not just ARs, but also bolt action rifles, shotguns, and the like--were about 500 per year. In contrast, those with handguns were 6000 (where the gun wasknown) in 2022, with another 4000 where it was "not known" whether it was a handgun or other weapon. In other words, probably a handgun caliber that could be used in a long gun, and where the firearm was not recovered. Or most likely, a handgun.

Put simply, the ratio of deaths is about 10,000 from handguns vs. a few hundred from all long guns, of which some are the Armalite platform. You want to keep people alive, you figure out what's going on with #1 on the Pareto. Answer to that; unwed parenting, gangs, and drugs.

Also worth noting is the question of why one would single out AR platform guns and not those based on the SKS, Kalishnikov, Thompson, or other repeating rifle models. This was why the 1994 "assault weapons ban" was such a farce--the same gun could have a bayonet lug removed and become legal, for example. Or in the case you mention, tweak the Armalite platform and become legal with no functional or lethality difference.

Remembering the 1994 law, it is also worth noting that when the DOJ worked the numbers, they did not find that it had done anything to reduce murders. Zero, zip, nada, bupkus.

Data and evidence are not the strong point of those who would ban guns, to put it mildly.

Joel Shaffer wrote: I’m not saying that in certain cities in America that the Ferguson Effect hasn’t contributed to a higher murder rate because of the suppression of police, and that in certain far-left cities it is the main cause (Portland comes to mind), but to broad-brush it as the unifying cause of America’s rising murder rate is simply not accurate.

I agree with this for the most part. The Ferguson Effect is most definitely real, but all it does is take advantage of the lack of policing by those who would already be willing to break the law to inflict even more damage. The root causes, as others have pointed out, would include the breakup of the core family unit, with unwed mothers and parenting, lack of teaching discipline and ethics/morals, drug trafficking, etc. But of course, those are much harder to solve than taking away guns, particularly taking them away from those who would already obey the law (which is easy, but wrong), so the latter is always what is suggested as a short cut to tackling the real issues.

As to the argument in this thread about making guns unavailable to those under 25, for me that would depend on whether or not you are just talking about guns, or about adulthood. If “children” or “minors” were defined as those under 25, so that there would be (in addition to restricted gun purchasing ability) no ability to enter into contracts, drive commercial vehicles, buy tobacco and alcohol products, or vote, I might be on board. Full exercise of constitutional rights has always been for adults. However, anyone who is considered old enough to cast a ballot (which in many ways is far more dangerous than gun ownership, particularly when exercised without knowledge), or drive a school bus full of children, can certainly own any firearm, even so-called “dangerous” ones. The responsibility needed for all three of these is similar.

I wasn't trying to say that Ferguson was the only thing going on, but it's a convenient point where the trends in crime rates seem to reverse.

And pretty much what Dave says about the age for buying an AR. You can kill a bunch of people with an AR, or you can kill a bunch of people with a car or truck, or by bad food safety. There has to be a limit about what degree to which we'regoing to "control" things, or else it's going to get a whole lot sillier.

Bert Perry wrote: And pretty much what Dave says about the age for buying an AR. You can kill a bunch of people with an AR, or you can kill a bunch of people with a car or truck, or by bad food safety. There has to be a limit about what degree to which we'regoing to "control" things, or else it's going to get a whole lot sillier.

What is silly is not recognizing that there is a common firearm used in most mass casualty events and not doing something to limit access to that type of firearm. As I said before, the weapon of choice for mass casualty events is the AR-style rifle, with large magazine capacity. They need to be made unavailable to people under 25 and/or severely restricted by classifying them on the NFA list.

If you don't like to completely take away the ability for someone 18-25 to purchase an AR-style rifle, then at least severely restrict it. They can exercise their 2nd amendment rights with another firearm.

The Washington state legislature recently passed an assault weapons ban. I fully support and applaud it.

TylerR wrote: The Washington state legislature recently passed an assault weapons ban. I fully support and applaud it.

Washington’s Senate Republicans said in a Twitter post last week that “banning certain weapons is not the solution to gun violence. We must deal with those who are using guns and other weapons to commit violent acts.”

The problem is most people who commit mass casualty events don't have a criminal past, can't be identified as dangerous beforehand, and therefore can't be preemptively "dealt with." People who commit mass casualty events seek to inflict the most carnage possible and chose high-powered, high-capacity firearms like the AR-style rifle.

Because we can't preemptively "deal with" these people, we must "deal with" the weapon of choice that most of these people use.

I'm a legal gun owner, but I too would fully support and applaud an assault weapons ban.

The different viewpoints about guns even in this thread illustrate that there are intelligent people on both sides of many of the political issues we fight about in this country. That was my main pushback to one of the comments earlier in the thread stating that a person who votes third party or for Biden should reckon themselves unfit to consider politics.

There are plenty of intelligent people on both sides of the aisle. It's both unfair and uncharitable to proclaim that anyone who views things differently than I do is a dufus. It also promotes division rather bringing both sides together. Our country needs to get back to a point where the two parties can have some civil political discourse and find areas of common ground.

Disagreement and debate is fine and can move the conversation forward. But these days it seems that both sides frequently resort to the lower forms of communication such as name-calling, demonization, ridicule, and mischaracterization.

TylerR wrote: The Washington state legislature recently passed an assault weapons ban. I fully support and applaud it.

And I am perfectly happy to live in a state that would never pass such a thing, and also happy to have people with your support of issues like this stay in states like Washington.

The best way for there to be civil disagreement on similar issues is mostly to stay separate. Just like you would probably not want to live in a state that would repudiate a so-called “assault weapons” ban, I’m happy to be where I am. I suspect that the bifurcation of the population of the U.S. into “red” and “blue” areas is only going to continue or even accelerate, and I for one “fully support and applaud” that, knowing there will never be common agreement, no matter how much discussion takes place.

After all, there is a reason that Federalism was baked right into the design of this country.

T Howard wrote: Because we can't preemptively "deal with" these people, we must "deal with" the weapon of choice that most of these people use.

So, if we ban these weapons, won't these people just use different weapons that are not banned? Or somehow get access to the banned weapons anyhow?

I just don't see how this solves the problem.