Political Roundtable - Part VII

[nate33]

I believe you're mistaken. At least from a practical standpoint, we have easy availability of things that
only the military ought to have access to. And your argument re armor piercing bullets still ring hollow.
What is the civilian necessity?

You can ban armor piecing bullets if you want. I wouldn't stand in your way. I just fail to see how that addresses the issue of gun violence.

[nate33]

Don't pussy out, nate. Say what you mean.

Funny. I merely summarized montestewart's position with more concise language, but when I say it, it activates your "Offense Detector".

Densely populated low income urban areas. I believe the dynamics of the problem are the same in every country in the world. The fact that those areas happen to have a high proportion of African Americans in the United States is irrelevant to the argument being made here.

For the record, I never once mentioned African Americans.

[Zonkerbl]

Here's gun control I'd support:

1. Every gun must be registered.
2. Every gun owner must be licensed. The license must be renewed every 5 years, with a required competency test. "Competency" meaning safe handling and safe shooting, NOT "hit what you aim at."
3. Every gun owner must carry insurance. Just like every car owner.
4. Every gun should be equipped with and/or retrofitted with a bio-passport so that it can be fired only by the gun owner.

In general, I think we'd be wise to think for ourselves on this issue rather than blindly adhering to a document written in a time when there was no electricity and the only weapons available were single-shot, muzzle-loading muskets.

I don't have a problem with the first 3 proposals, but I'm not really convinced they would make much difference. We don't have a problem with incompetent people murdering people with guns. The problem is that they're all too competent with the guns.

The 4th suggestion is interesting. I would have been against it 10 years ago because the technology would be extremely cost prohibitive, but maybe not so much anymore. I don't know how feasible the retrofit requirement is, but certainly they could make that a requirement for all newly manufactured guns.

My problem with this proposal is it only addresses a small part of the problems guns present. It won't stop people without a criminal record or history of mental illness from legally purchasing guns and then going on a murder spree. It won't stop people from sticking their legally purchased handgun in their mouth and pulling the trigger.

[dckingsfan]

1A) How do you know this? You don't. You assume it without facts.

Based upon the difficulty Australia is having + my belief in the American people to accept everyone - Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Indians, Asians, etc. as a valuable part of the US. I would counter that you haven't thought through the massive undertaking that this would require. I would think the onus would be on the proposer.

2A) (Your number system is confusing me) Mexico doesn't manufacture guns. We are the biggest manufacturer of guns world wide. If we ban their manufacture the world supply of guns will go down dramatically.

Hmmm, Zonk as an economist - when one source closes other sources are created? I might be completely wrong on this one though - I haven't completely thought it through.

3) I'm not proposing a ban on the ownership of guns. I'm proposing a ban on their manufacture and import. THANK YOU! This is the first time I've had an opportunity to explain this. There's absolutely no restriction in the Constitution on the supply of guns, only that we can't disallow their ownership. Fine, you can own guns, but we're just not going to make them or import them, and we're going to buy back the ones that exist now and melt them down.

Got it, makes much more sense... if you aren't proposing a ban it becomes much more doable. Then the question is the cost of confiscating the weapons that are out there.

4) How much do you think innocent children's lives are worth? Do you really want to have that argument out loud? If I were public official, there's no possible way I could lose that argument. Let's tally up how many people die at the hands of guns each year and figure out what that's worth. The standard statistical value of life ranges from $5 million to $7.5 million. In 2013 33,000 people died as a result of gunshot wounds (11,000 homicides, 21,000 suicides, 500 deaths from accidental discharge and some deaths from "unknown"). Let's adjust for suicides - the overall success rate of suicide attempts is 10%, but suicide attempts involving firearms have a success rate of 90%, so let's use 80% of the 21,000 suicides. $5 million * 29,000 = $145 BILLION WITH A B. Any amount we spend on a complete firearm buyback that is less than $145 billion, we come out ahead. There are 300 million guns in this country, so we come out ahead as long as we spend less than $483 per gun. Bleah, that number didn't come out as high as I would like but there. According to your figures the Australians are spending what, $71 per gun?

This is the same "type" of argument that has been so successful in politics. You could follow the same arguments with abortion or healthcare. There is always something that should be fixed but there are limited resources to do the fixing. We are already spending more $$ than we take in. So, what do we cut to do this?

And the Australians are spending > $500 per gun - my guess is with our propensity to litigate it will be north of that number.

I like the TheSecretWeapon's option better at this point. Put the onus on the gun owner.

[nate33]

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