“I am a liberal, but I don’t think adding to our currently unenforced gun control is the answer to solving these problems.”

I fall into a pretty similar bucket. I joke that I am a libertarian socialist. What many articles and blogs tend to leave out is the fact that it is already illegal for criminals and the mentally infirm to purchase a gun. Let me repeat that. Jared Loughner, under current law, should not have had that gun.

These two facts already bring up bill of rights issues though. The 1st 10 amendments to the constitution represent individual protections from the government. Things the government cannot do to assert it’s will over citizens, for whatever reason, whatever will that may be. I know 4th amendment violations boil everybody’s blood here on BoingBoing. They boil mine.

I think we can all agree that NSA warrantless wiretapping violates the 4th amendment, and it’s very dangerous to civil rights for the Executive Branch to just issue that order with no oversight or knowledge from the public. It’s a clear violation of the 4th amendment. And yet, it happened, and people will defend that action because it makes us ‘safer’. Now that more people are starting to learn about it perhaps it will gain some momentum… but probably not.

Anyways – like it or not, the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. And that right is the same level of ‘right’ that protects us from warrantless wiretapping. If gun control legislation is to be passed without considering the 2nd amendment then “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” would need to be downgraded from “Right” to “Privilege”. Violating the 2nd amendment in that way is totally analogous to passing a law that says the State/Fed government doesn’t need a warrant to spy on your internet traffic.

Wow, ok this is getting long. Onto danger/public safety. People especially fear guns because everybody knows a gun can be a dangerous thing. People also fear terrorists so they passed the USA PATRIOT Act, violating many other rights. The thing about the Bill of Rights is that it *absolutely IS dangerous*. All of it. All the rights we assert could be a danger to society as a whole.

The effects of pulling a trigger may be more immediatel­­y recognizab­­le as dangerous than someone spreading evil ideas but the principle is the same. I would argue that the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th amendments are just as dangerous as the 2nd.

1st – KKK, neo-nazi’­s and other ilk are free to recruit publicly and privately, all without violating the law

4th – the criminal is able to build bombs, make drugs, bury bodies as long as he does not tip the police off with any Probable Cause (evidence needed for a warrant)

5th – the gang member/ter­rorist cannot be compelled to rat out his friends who could be planning something destructiv­­e.

6th – the criminal has the right to fair trial

The Bill of Rights protects bad guys just as much is it protects good guys. The risk of a mentally ill person getting a gun and going on a shooting spree is worth the protected rights we have. As uncomforta­­ble as it makes me feel to think about somebody like Mr. Loughner having a gun, I think it’s worth keeping the right unviolated­­. Violate one, and you endanger the others.

If you disagree (and that’s fine) then at the very least recognize that you can’t violate the 2nd amendment without equally violating the principle behind the other amendments­­. I’m not against regulation. I am against regulation without considering everything I just typed.

I don’t think toys make for murderers, just like D&D doesn’t make for Satanists.

Care to make a case for why sane, law-abiding Americans should be restricted on the basis of what insane, law-breaking Americans do?

Sure: Because insane, law-breaking Americans are sane, law-abiding Americans until they aren’t. Unfortunately, with firearms we don’t find out who is what until people are dead.

It’s funny how some people like to analogize firearms with things like gas, or more commonly, cars. They try to reduce guns to being just like any other object that can kill people, yet fight against all regulation because the 2nd Amendment clearly gives a unique status to firearms.

But I respect your honesty: Gun regulations just get in the way of fun.

And travtastic makes good points. Does that make him a killjoy?

As to the WHY- because it can be feasibly engineered? Because someone, somewhere feels like firing 30 rounds before reloading could be hazardous to their health or patience?

If someone only has an hour for range time, I can see that they’d like to spend most of that firing, not reloading. A shoebox full of 31-rounders would provide that, if you have the patience to plan.

I, personally, find extended magazines ugly and pointless. They ruin the contours and balance of the gun, and typically run 3x the price of the standard capacity ones. But just because I personally would not buy something is not a reason for it’s nonexistence. No one suggests banning jumbo jugs of rat poison, even the potential for misuse is likewise there.

Now, as an adult, I wish I could tie better knots.

sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me

a child’s saying in all its wisdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun

A gun is a crew-served cannon, mounted onto a sea-going vessel. Noobs.

I agree, it is intensely interesting how little boys (and girls) will go out of their way to make weapons out of anything, more often than not the weapon is a gun.

I read an article awhile ago about violent video games and why they tend to sell better than non-violent games. Fighting and violence is important in play. Many animals play fight. It’s about learning your world, testing your limits and learning social functions. It’s something that is hard-wired in us. We must play as children and we must fight while we play.

Perhaps kids already see guns at very young ages, and they have an understanding that they are powerful weapons, more powerful than sticks, swords or knives. Perhaps kids in the bronze age made swords out of everything before they learned the real deadliness of a weapon as well?

“

It seems that you think the problem consists of people being at liberty to share their ideas: rather than the actual use – or incitement, or advocacy – of physical violence.

Hate speech ought indeed to be outlawed, and in the most enlightened parts of the globe, IS – at least from the publicly-owned Radio & TV airwaves.

Did you know 45% of 16 year old boys surveyed knew how to break down and clean a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range?

“I agree, it is intensely interesting how little boys (and *some* girls).

Boys generally speaking are more interested in weapons than girls at a young age.

My sniff test for anti-gun talk is to replace ‘gun’ with ‘rap music’, and ‘automatic weapons” with ‘Mass Media’. The Founding Fathers never envisioned having the ability to simultaneously broadcast information (or poorly thought-out option) across the country either, but that doesn’t mean we should re-think the First Amendment.

Here’s some…

“… guidelines for responding to your son’s fascination with guns while encouraging nonviolence:

1. Set parameters for the play. When we forbid a form of play, that play often goes underground and we lose an opportunity to help our children figure out answers to their questions. Make it clear to children that any play which intimidates, hurts or frightens another child is unacceptable. Then clarify the rules about guns at your house: “In our family, you are not allowed to point guns at any people or pets without their permission.” Or, “I want you to keep your gun play outside.”

2. Provide props for play that have multiple uses. Giving children open-ended props encourages flexibility and creativity. When a child makes a gun out of plastic blocks, ten minutes later, those plastic blocks can be transformed into a container ship. However, when children play with highly realistic guns, those guns can only shoot and kill.

3. Make your values clear. Children care deeply about how we see the world. Share your perspective with your son, “When I see you playing with guns, it really upsets me because people can be hurt by real guns.”

4. Help children deal with their fears. Often gun play increases when children are feeling fearful. Children look for symbols of power (such as guns and swords) to help them feel more secure. Helping children deal with their fears can take some of the intensity out of their gun play.

5. Let your kids know that people are working to stop violence in the real world. Kids sometimes use gun play to cope with fears about violence in the real world. If your child seems scared of real violence, talk about people who are working to stop fighting and end war. This can help kids feel safer and therefore, less driven to engage in gun play.

6. Provide kids with alternatives to gun play that help them feel powerful. Four- and five-year-olds love to be competent. Providing them with real work experiences such as carpentry, cooking and gardening can channel some of the energy being directed into gun play in a new, more creative direction (Davis and Keyser, 1997, p. 339). ”

From:

http://www.saskschools.ca/~psychportal/Psych30/topics/socializationandplay.htm

As others have pointed out, blaming gun culture for gun violence is like blaming D&D culture for ritual human sacrifice. Sure, every once in a while some guy turns up with a freezer full of human heads who happened to be big into RPGs, but 99.9999% of D&D players are just having a good time. Same goes for gun “nuts”. The overwhelming majority are exceptionally responsible and would never do anything like what happened in AZ a couple weeks ago.

Crazy people will be crazy. This guy happened to be into guns, so his psychosis manifested itself as a shooting spree. If he’s been a big Twilight fan, he might have gone around biting people and draining their blood. If he was big into Donkey Kong, he might have thrown flaming barrels from the top of scaffolding at passers-by. That wouldn’t have meant that trashy vampire books or classic arcade games caused the tragedy – merely that an unstable individual with an insufficient support system went completely off the deep end.

1. He did not know if the person Golding the gun was the shooter. (It was not, it was the person who disarmed Laughner.)
2. He did not want to shoot into a crowd of people.
3. He did not want then police to think he was the shooter and get shot himself.

Sorry about the off topic post.

What idiootic non-sense!

“Hate speech” ought indeed to be banned, as it has been in Canada and Europe: and anyhow, that is beside the poitn.
Rap music or mass media, has never killed anybody.

Or by accident, as guns often do:

http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/Girl_Boy_Shot_at_LA_School_Making_Progress_114287879.html

Easy access and the right to bear hadndguns has enhanced nobody’s freedoms or liberties, except that of those who wield and would use those weapons.

Prescisely the wrong people to have in control of others, IMHO – and that arrangement tends to give new and additional strength to the “right makes right” crowd too: they implicitly agree and argue that she with the biggest gun and fastest draw makes the rules now, and that is as it should be.

If you try to take their handguns away, they will, shoot you, and they are proud of their threats…just watch how “law-abiding” these gun types become when you ask them to register their guns, never mind trying to dis-arm them.

Melt the damned guns:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDUpXq0gQg

Stop basing public policy on violent adolescent fantasy, and open your eyes to the ever-renewing violence pain and suffering that guns bring into American life.

There is one issue though. The bad things that happened, which caused your thought-experiment nation to secede? Yeah, they’re still happening. Not to you, not to your neighbors, but they’re happening.

Not to Godwin anyone here, but if part of Germany had decided to (and successfully did) secede from the Reich in the 40s, I would not have looked on them very kindly. There would still be a Holocaust on.

This is obviously an extreme example, but it should scale nicely. The assholes of the world should not be running things. Secession is nothing but isolationism.

Easy access to handguns plays, or has, no role in enhancing either the liberties or the happiness of modern people, and in fact serves to undermine them, and to render the effects of intra-personal conflict more grievous, and more difficult to recover from.

The easy access to and availability of handguns, combined with Americans’ contempt for, and impatience and distrust of, all public authority, has RUINED America as a place to live a happy and carefree modern life.

1) It is a pain in the ass when you are shooting for fun to load magazines.

2) Past bans had no effect on crime, nor were they hard to find – they were just more expensive.

3) Other than a few high profile abuses, they aren’t harming anyone.

But that trait quickly becomes pernicious to the public safety (not to mention the state of the public purse, as police forces are forced to engage in an arms race with their own citizenry) where every person wields concealed instruments of deadly force, of easy and quick use.

Melt the guns.

You can preach this to an aunt of mine who lives in rural Texas, about 45 minutes from the sheriff. Who protects her when her husband is on the road? Maybe there aren’t any criminals in Canada, but there are in the USA.

Or you could move to Camden, NJ, where they’ve just cut the police force in half. There’s an old joke: call for a pizza and a policeman, see who gets there first. It’s not the fault of the police, but there it is.

The guys with the biggest guns always make the rules. It’s an institution called “The Government”. Let me assure you, they not only have the most guns, they are legally allowed to use them.

Plus, in the USA, we have outlawed liquor, prostitution, marijuana, cocaine, XTC, heroin, crack cocaine, magic mushrooms, et cetera, in order to prevent access. Doesn’t work so well, in fact the opposite happens: it becomes more available. The only real effect is to bring the quality down. And create another funding stream for organized crime.

Also, as far as hate speech is concerned, we have the pesky belief in freedom of speech, or more appropriately freedom of thought. You want to be a Nazi? Knock yourself out. If you don’t want to hear what someone says, don’t listen.