Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Playergamer]

"It worked in Australia."

You realize that buyback brought in around 25% of the guns banned by the new law, right?

[DJ]

It's kinda silly that the line is drawn at guns, though. The Constitution uses the word arms, not firearms, so why can't I legally own a dirty bomb or anthrax spores? They'd certainly be better for resisting government tyranny in this day and age.

[Leafsnail]

Oh great there was that graph of "firearm crime" going up after the handgun ban was implemented. Let me give a theoretical example to illustrate why that might be.

Let's say there was a country where taking things from people doesn't count as theft as long as you do it at night. Then one day they decided that actually it should count as theft even if you do it at night. Do the recorded theft rates go up or down?

[Sonlirain]

sonli, you didn't really call much, because that's pretty massively misrepresenting the discussion that's been going on over the last several pages. There's maybe one or two people in here advocating for a complete ban, and as stated repeatedly that's basically a fringe position so far as the stateside gun control debate goes.

2 people is still a good number of people who take part in the conversation and voiced their opinion IIRC.

People can buy a pretty wide range of firearms because, well, that's what the US citizenry has pretty largely supported.

Except what the masses want is not always the smartest thing.

Hobbies, sports shooting, and wildlife control are reasons enough for us (and note, even many countries with stronger gun control laws still allow for those to one extent or another), nevermind self-defense and whatnot.

Fair enough. I'm still in favor of leaving wildlife control to professionals tho.

Good chunk of the pro-control folks in the states would be perfectly fine with you owning and operating a chaingun or some shite, just maybe not allowed to store it at home or somethin'.

- We are so progressive, you can even own a chaingun here!
- Oh boy i can't wait to mount it on my technical!
- Yeah... about that. You are not allowed to carry it outside of this national guard outpost without the company of at least 3 guardsmen.
- Wait.. what?

[Vilanat]

Oh great there was that graph of "firearm crime" going up after the handgun ban was implemented. Let me give a theoretical example to illustrate why that might be.

Let's say there was a country where taking things from people doesn't count as theft as long as you do it at night. Then one day they decided that actually it should count as theft even if you do it at night. Do the recorded theft rates go up or down?

Only if a firearm crime involved owning a gun goes into the graph.

[Antioch]

Oh great there was that graph of "firearm crime" going up after the handgun ban was implemented. Let me give a theoretical example to illustrate why that might be.

Let's say there was a country where taking things from people doesn't count as theft as long as you do it at night. Then one day they decided that actually it should count as theft even if you do it at night. Do the recorded theft rates go up or down?

Only if a firearm crime involved owning a gun goes into the graph.

I find the graph on page 14 a nice example of how to lie with these statistics.

"Look! firearm crime has increased after the ban!", let's forget that it has been increasing for the last 50 years as well.

[LoSboccacc]

are we forgetting the guy had passed background checks to work as a security guard AND a FBI investigation turned out nothing and reportedly had a valid firearm license?

sure, bureaucrats run background check to control guns access will definitely have worked where a FBI investigation failed, right?

[hector13]

The ATF is not fit for purpose, at least on the F part. The NRA has seen to that. Christ, they're not even allowed to use fucking computers.

[Playergamer]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

[Wolfhunter107]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Neither of those have anything to do with the background check system.

[hector13]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

[Frumple]

Pretty sure most of the folks existentially terrified of the ATF being something besides crippled are roughly about as enthusiastic about seeing those organizations made useless, too.

[RedKing]

The ATF is not fit for purpose, at least on the F part. The NRA has seen to that. Christ, they're not even allowed to use fucking computers.

^^^^
THIS. So much this.

To be specific, they use them in the field, in detective work, in building cases, etc. But not in tracking and organizing gun registrations. To run a check on a firearm, a LLEO (local law enforcement organization) goes to a website, punches in the serial on a firearm that they've recovered. This creates an email that goes to a department of people up in Martinsburg, WV who then have to PRINT the email, and bundle it with a stack of other requests. This gets handed to a small team of guys who then go trudging through a warehouse of boxes filled with paper registrations, find the matching serials (hopefully not misfiled) and hopefully with the complete registrations/transfer paper trail. The box with the request then gets delivered to one of another department of people who spend their day looking over the paper trail and manually typing the info back into a computer system so that it can be delivered to the LLEO who requested it in the first place.

God help you if someone made a typo along the way.

It's completely fucking asinine, antiquated, and unnecessary. A digital records system would improve the speed and accuracy of results by orders of magnitude, and decrease the overhead cost of the BATF, because that's a few hundred paper-pushers you don't need anymore.

But no, the Republicans (at the behest of the NRA) keep the BATF stuck in the 1960's both in terms of budget and technology. So they can point to it and its inadequacies and say "THEY'RE the problem, why aren't they enforcing the gun laws on the books??"

[Strife26]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

Probably the general libertarian and American ideal that government power needs to be reigned and limited whenever possible, because they'll always end up using it in nonideal ways

[RedKing]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

Probably the general libertarian and American ideal that government power needs to be reigned and limited whenever possible, because they'll always end up using it in nonideal ways

How about we just amend that to "power in all forms"? Because I'd onboard with reigning in and limiting the power of banks, corporations, lobbying organizations, churches, etc.