Gun Control and Regulations

A locked box is better than a trigger lock, though.

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If your mandating storage, you could always require the firing pin be removed, I really doubt a child would know how to put it back in.

Store it elsewhere for bonus points.

Frankly, just appeal to their racism and point out that all those laws will make it more difficult for poorer people and criminals (which are in their mind Black people) to purchase a weapon and they will be all for it. After all, the first gun control laws in the US were born out of racism, too.

Ouch.

Including a trigger lock inside of a locked container especially if it is a combo or separate key does add an additional layer to cover mistakes like forgetting to lock the cabinet or gun box.

Who watches the watchmen?

> I really doubt a child would know how to put it back in.

Do not underestimate what a child knows,especially if they can look up the solution on Google

Edited by Ultimatum on Nov 10th 2018 at 6:32:37 AM

New theme music also a box

I know, but it's absolutely true. Just look up the history of gun laws.

If a child has gotten the key to a locked container, opened it, made the gun work by inserting the firing pin, and loaded the thing, then we're beyond the realm of an accidental shooting.

Of course, so many people will oppose the entire concept because obviously they don't think that they're likely to shoot someone because of a disagreement or consider suicide, so how dare they be inconvenienced by good habits.

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No it wouldn't. Being able to remove a fixed magazine in order to clean and maintain it is not what I meant by "removable magazine". I'm talking about guns where the magazine is built into the weapon and you reload by feeding individual rounds into it, as opposed to guns where the magazine is a separate component and you reload by swapping out the entire empty magazine for a full one you're carrying.

Are you being deliberately disingenuous? Automatic weapons in the hands of criminal enterprises were a serious problem. We passed legislation that strictly regulated automatic weapons. Today, automatic weapons are basically never used in gun crimes. This is an example of successful legislation.

My suggestion was to make it mechanically impossible for the action to work faster than the targeted rate. The whole point is that "simply work the action faster" would be made physically impossible. (Again, I'm not suggesting that this is actually a good law that we should pass, I'm just pointing out that it's not impossible as you're claiming.)

That's not what was meant by "features" in the context of the original comment. They were using "features" to mean "capabilities", not "accessories". The comment I was responding to was "Regulating by feature or type is a futile endeavor because it requires a too technical approach to be successful, and that approach can be easily worked around. Permitting the very act of ownership is the only viable solution." Archonspeaks was saying that you can't regulate guns, you can only regulate ownership. The restrictions on automatic weapons are a clear counterexample to this assertion — it regulates "feature or type" (ie, fully automatic weapons as opposed to any other kind of firearm) and successfully ended the problem presented by that class of firearm, without requiring strict regulation of any other kind of weapon.

I'm down with this kind of thing. The regulatory scheme I like most for firearms is similar to driver's licenses. You must have a license to operate a firearm. In order to get a license, you must take classes and pass both a written and practical exam. Guns must be registered to a specific owner, who is then legally responsible for it. Hell, I'd even be up for the idea that you have to carry insurance, too. I would change it so that only the owner of the firearm needs a license, though — you can loan someone a gun and let them use it (temporarily) without them needing their own license. However, the licensed owner of the gun is still legally responsible for it, so if someone borrows a gun and then murders someone with it, the gun owner is charged with murder as well.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'd argue that a licence owner whose gun gets used in a murder should be charged with reckless endangerment leading to manslaughter or accessory to murder charges (especially if they didn't report the theft or loss of said gun, double so in the case of wilfully lending out a gun without due care and attention), alongside any crimes involved with breaking federal/state licencing laws.

Reasons to keep tabs on your damned gun... And, not to hand it over to a friend without asking why they're suddenly interested in turkey shooting or being there to show them how to shoot.

In short: make sure you have the correct third party support on your licence and insurance policy — and, forget unsupervised lending out for weeks at a time. Insurance companies Have Distinct Views on that regarding cars, let alone what they could have with guns.

I wasn't supposing getting charged for unwittingly supplying a gun through theft/loss if you didn't get a reasonable amount of time to discover and report it, first. But, if you, say, had lost the gun six months before the shooting occurred and proceeded to sit on your thumbs and/or hadn't checked your inventory at all in that time... Yeah. You should get the book thrown at you. At great force.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 10th 2018 at 6:42:02 PM

Eh...make an exception for theft/robbery, if the owner followed the rules. There is no way to 100% prevent that.

The only exception should be if the gun is stolen and used in a crime faster than you could conceivably report it—e.g., locked away in your house and stolen, then used before you've even gone home to find out.

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Euo: Since I am mentioning the German law in this post they have provisions for giving over firearms to those who shouldn't have them. Which can cost you your license. They have provisions for reckless behaviours as well.

I have to agree with the others in terms of reporting. If someone steals your gun, as long you as you stored it safely, and reported it within a reasonable timeframe of discovering the firearm missing they shouldn't be held accountable for how it is used. A 24-48 hour window from discovery to report allows the owners to make sure it is in fact gone and not stupidly misplaced or some other incident.

Jovian: Archon pointing out that regulation of ownership is the single most effective measure is accurate. It avoids quite a few loopholes and covers every variety of firearm without having to play around with technical definitions that lead to those loopholes. It is far more easy to say who can own a firearm than it is to try and single out a particular feature or function. Archon also mentioned German gun laws as a preferred example a couple of times. Looking at their laws and requirements I can see why. They weed out a lot of the people who cause our biggest problems here in the states. They break the law down into several categories a person has to satisfy in order to get a gun license in the first place and then further categorize their licensing which tells you what kind of firearms you can own and under what conditions. He is partly right in that they are not as restrictive in some weapons categories as the US but getting a license to purchase or own them is a lot harder to obtain. The US adopting similar measures just to get a license would address nearly all of our issues. Of course implementing something like what the German's have is easier said than done for the US.

Immy: In the US long guns are preferred for mass shootings which is one of the regular promptings for more effective gun control. Handguns are preferred by criminals but most criminal actions tend to involve comparatively smaller numbers of victims. There have been some big shootings with handguns in the US but overall the long arms are the preferred weapon. Conversely, since Archon mentioned Germany and its gun laws, from what I could find of their mass murder incidents, way fewer than the US, the ones they do have are overwhelmingly handguns and one or two oddball incidents.

For the curious This a link to a translation of the German Gun Laws. I am actually impressed with how thorough their law is. Even their need requirements while they restrict ownership still strikes me as generally fair and Germany still manages to have millions of gun owners overall.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 10th 2018 at 12:15:22 PM

Who watches the watchmen?

That's not Archon's argument. Archon was saying that regulation of guns rather than owners is impossible. If you want to argue that regulating owners rather than guns is better, then you can make that argument. But they were saying that regulating guns doesn't work, which is why I brought up examples of where it objectively did work.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Jovian: Fair enough.

Who watches the watchmen?

Well, if you listen to German gun enthusiast, the rules are idiotic and overly complicated. I don't think so, though. A gun is no toy after all...though I might get behind the idea that the knife regulations need an overhaul. They don't really make that much sense.

What happens when the storage rules ignored shows a school shooting where the (already in psychic treatment) attacker stole the (not properly stored) gun of his father and killed 15 (the father got half a year on probation in the end). There was even the discussion to disallow sport shooters to keep their guns at home altogether and instead force them to store them in the Club in the aftermath.

Next year it will be a decade since the last amok attack at a school in Germany, though there was inbetween the Shooter in Munich, but that was more a right wing terror attack which "happened" to target young people of colour.

But yes, gun ownership in Germany is pretty high. As I said, long hunting tradition. In a lot of areas there are so called "Schützenfeste" which are all about celebrating the best shooter, and naturally Biatholon (which is a combination of skiing and shooting) is a popular winter sport. It's just framed differently than in the US. Like, in the US you see someone firing a few rounds and think that he is oh so cool. In Germany shooting is all about precision. Like, the best hunter is not the one who offer the biggest game, but the one who manages a great "Blattschuss" (a shoot which kills within seconds) from the highest distance.

Edited by Swanpride on Nov 10th 2018 at 12:19:20 PM

This is a bit of a misrepresentation of my point, and I think you know it.

Regulation by feature is inarguably less successful and more complex than regulation by ownership. Assault weapons bans and othe feature laws have almost universally failed to make an impact. And in the context of the conversation you were replying to, I’d say it may as well be legally impossible to do a fire rate law given the inherent issues with such a proposition.

They should have sent a poet.

The winter biathlon and triathlon (running, biking, skiing — all cross-country) events: ouch.

Only the biathlon is usual, and, to this day, it amazes me that anybody can even aim straight towards the latter stages of it, let alone hit the targets.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 10th 2018 at 8:36:55 PM

Well, that is the point, to have the discipline to slow down your pulse enough to do it. The discipline grew out of the mountain units.

The US probably has the largest competitive shooting scene, though we don’t really do skiing and shooting sports.

They should have sent a poet.

In the US hunting especially as a family tradition is pretty big. Definitely from the "Frontier of the New World" from the colonial days. The US also does have a solid tradition of precision shooting and there is an excessively proud history of "Militia Sharpshooters" sticking it to those "dirty Brits". The reality is both the Brits and the US heavily employed sharpshooters often drawn from local hunters and poachers or even from local Tribal groups.

There were regular shooting contests before and after the Revolution. During the Civil War, the US formed a Corps of sharpshooters from amongst the members of shooting clubs. They had a rather eclectic collection of firearms at the outset IIRC>. There is no shortage of accuracy oriented shooting in the US with distance shooting being one of the favourites. Even the Rapid Fire shooting events still emphasize accuracy as well as speed. The video Archon shared earlier is from what they usually refer to as Cowboy Action Shooting a type of competitive shooting themed around the firearms and sometimes even outfits from the "Cowboy Era".

There are a lot of sport shooters in the US. The US used to have very robust Scholastic competitive shooting all over the US. Various youth groups still teach sport and hunting shooting as well. The ranger rick idiots though seem to be more common.

Who watches the watchmen?

Is it? Here's what you've said on the subject.

You've literally said, repeatedly, that it cannot be done. Maybe you were exaggerating for effect and you didn't mean it literally, but that's what you've actually said about it.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Oh, I don't doubt that. I just wanted to explain how it comes that there are so many weapon owners in Germany (some are simply collectors, though...you need a permit to collect historical weapons, too, and they have to be made unusable), and a difference I observed in attitude. When there are documentaries about people who shoot in the US, you often get this guy who show off their biggest weapons and then turn around and demonstrate how much it packs a punch. That's so far removed on how the German shooting scene operates. There it is all about acting responsible and hitting the target with as little shots as possible. Even the hunting is often framed in a "well, it needs to be done" kind of way.

I think part of that is they go out of their way to find those types or they are far more likely to volunteer for a conversation.

Who watches the watchmen?

Why don’t you go back and actually read what you’re quoting before trying to prove a point. Here, I’ll point out the relevant sections for you:

Nowhere did I say it would be literally impossible to write that legislation. It's ridiculous to try and even claim that. What I said, and I stand by this point, is that it would be ineffective, absurdly difficult and overly complex compared to much simpler solutions like permitting that would have the same exact effect.

If you’re going to have a discussion you have to actually engage the points, not knock down strawmen.

Yeah, I think you'll probably find the same group of knuckleheads in any population of gun owners. Germany's gun culture is actually very similar to the US's in a lot of ways, believe it or not. They have the same emphasis on sport shooting and hunting we do, the main difference is they don't have the self-defense delusions quite as often.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 10th 2018 at 3:55:53 AM

They should have sent a poet.

We don't have the self-defence illusion at all. I have never in my whole live have seen anyone in Germany but a police officer walking around with a gun at his belt (not that this would be allowed anyway). And the notion that someone would have a gun at the nightstand or ready under the bed...yeah, not something usual. At all. Partly because we are taught that if you aren't trained to shot someone, a gun is more dangerous for you than a potential attacker.

Though the similarities between Germany and the US might make it a good place to start looking for inspiration. Along with Canada.

Edited by Swanpride on Nov 10th 2018 at 5:27:26 AM