EchoesOfTheHorizon wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 7:21 am
I would say it is wise for people to culturally own guns, but hardly mandatory. The specific level of spread of gun ownership should resemble that of a herd immunity, where not ever animal is vaccinated against a disease, but enough are to radically reduce the amount of animals at any one time that can be infected, seriously lessening the ability of disease to move about in a population. If enough people own weapons, then there is obviously validity in doing so as a deterrent to violent crimes and burgularies, as well as pedophiles targeting children.
I would add a few stipulations though.
1) I'm not comfortable at all as a Army Infantry Veteran here in the US with much of the gun crowd. The constitutional stipulation isn't remotely dealing with individual gun ownership or protection of homes, but rather that of individual states to remain armed, maintaining militias. In other wards, had Hillary became president, she wouldn't of been able to tell my state, West Virginia, that she was coming into close all the coal mines, and doesn't like how we keep blocking roads, and can order the disarmament of militias. This is a constitutional limitation on the office of Commander in Chief that otherwise a commander and chief would have in regards to prior English and American experience. Restricting Habeas Corpus (a historic right of Commander in Chiefs of the Armed Forces since English times) doesn't effect this, as militias can still be legally armed even then. I'm not aware of a single case during the US civil war of defeated militias facing prosecution for this obvious right of assembly and free association, and bearing arms. It was the act of treason, bearing arms against the state, and a refusal to head martial law that got them chased down, shot up and disbanded, systematically after several years of war. You indeed have a right to bear arms.... but it is a state centered right to have them. It isn't a inherent constitutionally specified right that states have to have them, or that smaller municipalities have to go along with it. A example, the shootout at the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp.... the town banned guns, couldn't have any in the city limits save for going straight to the sheriff to check them in and out upon leaving. The US military itself follows similar rules, private ownership is allowed, but access at all times is restricted by a commander, and your privately owned arms on base must be kept in the arms room.
Similar thinking suggests a state can (and many do somewhat) require gun licenses, proving you are competent to carry a gun. I don't always support gun licenses, the logic being found in the classical version of the movie "Red Dawn", too easy to track down gun owners so as to prevent a effective resistance and guerilla movement from popping up in the face of a invasion of corrupt (Hillary) federal government in a massive tyrannical overreach, such governments must be resisted, foreign or domestic, as the Oath of every US soldier requires, to oppose foreign and domestic enemies. This being said, you could have a different sort of database registered to serial numbers on weapons and heavily encrypted data on certain biomarkers to make sure anyone found carrying a gun is qualified to shoot that gun, to maintain it, and use it safely. Too many idiots ride around with loaded pistols in the glovebox, maintaining arsenals in their homes large enough to equip a infantry platoon. I can't grasp this fascination with firearms. Smears/Mr. Reasonable over on ILP is one such idiot, and I've scolded him many times for it. I myself wouldn't want more than maybe two guns max, a semi automatic M14 for nostalgic reasons (favorite gun from the military I shot) and a shotgun pistol I could load with beanbags, or maybe just a normal shotgun.
I think military Command Sargent Majors should regulate this for a fee, in every state via the National Guard, and require everyone to join a militia, a militia being so loosely defined as a neighborhood watch associated with a gun range, where they can observe you shooting, give a few classes. Sheriffs and police chiefs do this as well, but think that money is better spent on that state level, maintaining the guard preferable. If people more widely knew the rules, they would keep one another in check.
As to the belief that individuals can bare arms, this is merely a opinion of the Supreme Court, not based in the constitution itself, and they also stipulated it was for home defence, which isn't based in the constitution. Such rulings oftentimes get stripped by later supreme courts when they can't find the justification for it in law, a example being the right to gay marriage..... absolutely not found anywhere in the constitution. The right to bare arms has equal validity, perhaps slightly more, as gun rights are actually detailed in the constitution.... but it isn't even a stretch to claim it is a interpretation, as the constitution is written in clear easy to understand English, and this interpretation isn't supported in the text whatsoever as it is written.
That being said, I do agree with the idea of a general, widespread ownership, on the basis of state and not constitutional law. It is only in predominately liberal areas that gun violence is even a issue, most of the US has much lower crime rates, including violent crime, than most parts of Europe. I've only had gun fears once where I live, and it was from out of town drug dealers from Detroit (liberal area selling drugs in a conservative area) stalking me for a while when I walked by. I had to give them the impression while they walked behind me I was packing and was about to pull on them. Other than that, no issue, and my neighborhood has more guns than many large police departments do. It is next to never a issue, unless a kid finds a unsecured weapon and shoot himself in the hand.... and we have strict laws on securing guns in safes when not in use.
I do recommend having your shotguns filled with three types of shot, first load in red kill shot, two.... then load in one yellow bird shot, then load in two bean bags. If you can, have a taser pistol grip added to the shotgun.
This way, you have two beanbags to shoot a intruder with, as well as the taser to take the, down. Neither are guaranteed to work, as tasers don't always take down a large assaliant, and sprays exist which stop the electrical discharge from effecting a person hit. Beanbags can lay a person down fast, but again, depends on where you hit them, and a person panicked isn't always the best shot when some guy is moving rapidly through a door towards them. Bird shot is less potentially lethal, but hurts like hell. This is a final chance to back off, before the more lethal option. You have two kill shots after that, for your standard 5 round pump action shotgun, total of six hits in a home defence situation. Detroit has had a lot of lock in taking the herd immunity approach of widely passing out shotguns, so my advice would apply to them, if you are squeamish on killing. A SOP such as this can be learned and exploited however, so a more lethal approach might be required over time. If everyone is in a militia, then the militia (again, just your local shooting range instructor or police chief, or CSM) has a right to issue how you load and use your weapons in the ordering of a militia. This is a certain, absolute fact, I've read many of the old militia handbooks written in the English language from the 1600s to the Revolution, including Baron Von Steuben's Bluebook (sold in the town next to mine, Steubenville, Ohio.... it is the basis of the US Army Bluebook)..... they certainly grandfathered in the right to order such things, that a inherent right of any militia, and we specify militia in the constitution. It will be a incredible uphill battle for anyone to claim otherwise, as the Library of Congress keeps a anthology of these books in the Rare Books Room (well, the room opposite of it, the Rose Room I think it was, I went through the list a decade a decade ago for the sake of tracking them down).
As to larger "automatic rifle" shootings, I came up with a very unique solution given my speciality in the army that nobody could match me in.... that of clogging up any weapon given to me in record time. People were amazed at my ability in this. If we switched our idiotic focus from regulating what qualifies as a semi or fully automatic rifle, and made it into one where we allowed any rifle, but regulated the alloys of the bullets, we could within a few months put a stop to most shootings, and fool-proof the future against most 3-D and 4-D printed rifles made at home from being a nuisance.
My idea is to not so much as heavily restrict like Obama unlawfully tried to, but rather heavily tax all bullets sold in stores by 10 times the amount, save for at gun ranges, and instead allow a yearly tax free purchase of one clip's worth per weapon type (that is annually for home defense, very few people go through more than one clip in a year defending their homes) and have to present the expended brass stamped be shell for replacements at the end of that year (yes, the army itself does something similar, weighing brass after shooting, hard as hell to find the brass in Alaska in the winter, they melt into the ice after firing).
While the regular types of bullets are heavily restricted via taxation (you can buy them still at exorbitant prices if you absolutely must), each rifle type can instead shoot bullets made of Bismuth. Why Bismuth? Easiest metal I know of that can easily melt in a super heated rifle barrel, the kind of rifle barrels that get hot as hell from repeated firing.
A Bismuth bullet, I believe when shot on single shot, a few every minute or so, should in general get through a barrel without falling apart, clogging everything up. Anything more, and you have a metal mess, a metal find of forming geometric shapes, and a pain in the ass to clean, which would involve heating the barrel up, and letting it all melt out over time, and snaking it repeatedly. Bismuth is non-toxic, used as a ingredient to pepto bismol.
While the Supreme Court would never allow a outright ban to access to normal bullets, or restricting access and training for militias, be it state or independent, they would allow a heavy taxation scheme that takes these protected groups into consideration as far as training access goes, as well as reasonable home protection access. The rest of the bullets for sport or hunting can be made of regulated composite uses, like a Bismuth bullet with a small copper pin core (same pins as locksmith pins to weigh them down for similar trajectories).
If this is done, then congress can ban all access to NON-Bismuth bullets sold on the market save for the groups as described above. This means, your normal shooter heading into a store to buy bullets would have reasonable access to the shitty cheap bullets that clog your rifle up for hours if you over shoot them, unless they are going to fork out a lot of money in taxes, and that is if the store even stocks those bullets.
This means you can hunt with a bismuth bullet, but gotta be a great shot and not require shot after shot after shot in rapid succession just to hit your target.... anyone requiring that much shot shouldn't be hunting in the first damn place, given you are torturing the poor deer. One shot, solid kill or get the hell out of the woods. You can go for the more expensive shot, but it will be painfully expensive. A good shooter wouldn't have issues here.
These bullets will require a few years to go into production, not because they are hard to make, but because they will need to know what size pin to put into ratio per bullet, per type of gun, for trajectories at every range, be it 25 yards, 50, 75, 100, 200, etc. It will take a little time for gun enthusiasts and manufacturers to know what weight-ratio to melt point matches their preferred hunting rifle or pistols. Most major brands of course will figure this out in weeks to months, but some more exotic brands, or antiques, won't know. This needs standardized, and I don't have the funds to hire a couple of guys to do this.
So that's my long term solution to fixing the mass shooting issue. Banning guns English style is deeply unethical and downright evil in the long run, given we already have the ability to make 3-D printed guns, and obviously traditional airsoft printed assault rifles can easily be adjusted to shoot rifles. All the British did was create a crisis soon to explode on themselves in not knowing how to handle the sudden reergence of military grade weapons readily in reach, as 3-D printers become more and more popular. What are they going to do, ban plastic, ban internet downloads for plans? Absolutely ineffective, and police departments haven't a clue how to respond or live in a armed population, much less thrive. Only thing that might slow it down is the difficulty of making propellant for rounds, and that can easily be made in the kitchen.
However, a society well adjusted to gun ownership and not scared at neighbors owning even full arsenals of weapons, has a much better grip on things. If you stick to limited but reasonable access to military grade ammo, and allow a much easier to clog alternative if shot too much in rapid succession, you'll substantially will cut down on mass shootings. If you get rid of weapons all together, the impulse towards violence hardly decreases, if anything, it will go unresolved, like in the U.K., the acid attack capital of the western world. Technological innovations already or just on the horizon will utterly fuck that backwards society, while more mature societies like the US, Switzerland, with widespread gun ownership won't have much of a issue. The problem isn't the gun, and the solution isn't in restricting the aspects of the gun that allows it to be fully automatic, so doing what the democrats do in naming the parts of a rifle and banning them in parts is self defeating and idiotic, it is in the bullets themselves. Once we know the ratings of a bismuth melt ratio per weapons type, we can regulate that rifles coming out show what copper or bismuth shot they can shoot, ban every other alloy, and ban innovations outside this twin bullet system, such as a entrepreneur trying to market tin bullets instead that don't melt outside of the tax scheme. A large buyer of bullets with no explanation for why they want all those high cost bullets can be tipped off to police (buying say, more than 200 rounds).
I do believe my way foreward is the only practical way foreward. It is a recent idea, thus why you never heard of it before. Own any weapon, but restrict the kinds of bullets, but allow really shitty melting bullets to be sold much, much cheaper. Most will hate the bullets, but will quickly grasp you can shoot slowly and still kill deer. Special state exceptions per situation can be made, for types of use, I have no issue with that. We've approached gun control ass backwards up till I figured this out. It is the only viable way foreward. See what happens if you shoot a bunch of bismuth rounds out, you weapon won't work. That's how you do it.
