Gonna have to do some chopping, we're getting rather long again
Let me cut you off here, all the physical forces have 'infinite range' - in theory anyway - but the also propagate at c or slower, gravity included, those place we can't see anymore can't every gravitationally effect us further. If I magically conjure another gas giant into the solar system it's gravity wouldn't effect us until the light from it got here. The stuff that red shifts beyond the Observable Universe is still sending light and gravity our way, but neither will ever reach us or effect us.
One could argue that it no longer exists, since it can not be detected in any fashion. For all practical purposes it may as well be an alternate Universe, those probably exist too. If the Universe is defined as all there is everywhere and when, then sure, it exists, but that's the definition we use for Multiverse or the Whole Shebang.
The core concept here is that Observable Universe is very important philosophically, is that if something can not interact in any fashion it can't conceivably be detected and thus discussing whether or not it is real becomes beyond academic. The universe seems to conspire to make the individual observer the only legitimate baseline for observation and I've always found that shiveringly solipsistic.
Only if mind is taken as automatically synonymous to 'brain', rather than just as 'the part of I that thinks', which is cheerfully flexible, since it can include all of you or simply your brain or some supernatural quantity.
It's never been claimed - by anyone reasonably modern and serious anyway - that people's senses are totally accurate. Accuracy of observation isn't included as a necessity of one's ability to interact with the world around you and draw conclusions. A core think here is that those senses aren't lying to you, they are dutifully functioning within their physical limits, and your interpretation of the data is based on those mechanical limitations and your own incomplete interpretation. If your senses were lying to you we'd be in a different discussion altogether, one of the various variations of brain in a tank.
Existence must be treated as a given, else there would be very little point in discussing it. That doesn't mean it is definitely so, there are detailed criticisms of this by guys like Bernard Williams if you want to review them. Not even including that in a totally natural, non-supernatural universe 'thought' has to be considered a totally arbitrary and meaningless concept, something I've always found vaguely amusing as a person who is trained to apply thought to determine the natural workings of the Universe. "I" and "think" do not actually appear to be noteworthy quantities in our universe.
Can't help but think Lucas, the only one 'justified' to do it, did it worse than anyone else. Leading me to believe most writers (Like Brandon Sanderson) who get to follow up face shitloads of unfair criticism. I've usually enjoyed Expanded Universe stuff from almost anyone.
Okay, you listed 3 things there but I'm afraid you misunderstood what I meant by 'competence' in this case, I was thinking the 'adult of sound mind' aspect. Your specific three are fine by me, though I'd do it differently, in terms of competent to fire a weapon. For one thing, a blind man may buy a car, he just may not personally operate it on public roads, which is what a license lets you do. Remember that Castle Doctrine is a very real and important thing in US law and of course our common morality. A person need not have a license to own a car, just to operate it on public property, if we were talking permit to carry (concealed or otherwise) on public property then we're in a different sphere then purchase, or carry/use on private property. My hypothetical 15 year old daughter can not buy a pistol nor drive a car on the road, but she may certainly fire a pistol (anyone may in self-defense even felons) under my direction on my property or someone's private gun range, if they permit it. Same I'm pretty sure she can own a car, but she may certainly drive on my property with my permission and supervision, though I'm not sure the latter is actually required. So I think in this regard we'd be talking 'competent to operate' and that it would have to apply only to public ground. From a realistic perspective I'd want to train my kid in gun safety, especially pistols, from a relatively young age, and were I legally blind for instance I'd actually consider it more important since I couldn't protect them as well. I'd also feel pretty infringed on if my aim, as a legally blind but sound of mind adult, someone told me that even though I can make out people decently a ten feet I can't own/operate a gun when an awful lot of self-defense cases take place at that proximity. Hell a blind man could make a good case to me that he doesn't need to be able to see to shoot a mugger who is physically touching him and speaking, not exactly a freakishly uncommon and unlikely situation.
In any event though I meant 'mentally competent', outside of very severe and obvious cases where the person shouldn't be allowed in public without a minder, if at all, it's getting into shaky ground for me to determine if they are or not.
'Shooting without a license' is a non-existent thing. So is driving without a license, because that's actually operating a motor vehicle on public roads/property without permission (license) to do so. If the 2nd amendment didn't exist, then that would be legal and parallel, to ban carry or operation of a gun on public property. It would still be different then purchase and would still run into the issue that it is very hard to establish routine carrying of a gun represents a plausible hazard to the public. Whereas routine operation of a car obviously does. It is already illegal to simply discharge a firearm on public property or someone else's private property without their permission, or even on your property in a manner that can easily translate to someone else's property, like an apartment building, that just gets overridden for self-defense. But your example is void, I can not simply walk up and down the street randomly firing into the air or even waving the gun around. We've already got laws for that. We also hit the difference that operating a car is an entirely different cup of tea from a gun. Routine gun use is simply carrying the weapon, exposing no realistic risk to others, routine car operation does expose people to danger.
'without testing' is a big bad assumption there.
Probably a couple hundred unless its balsa wood, if nails are people...
There's hypocrisy from our perspective in basing rules around spree killers, since they are a themselves 'anomalous exceptions'. Your odds of ever even encountering one, even just let them bum your lighter for a second, are very low. Your odds of being involved with a violent crime (committing, suffering, directly witnessing) are far higher than your odds of ever even sitting in the same diner with a spree killer. From our perspective it is absolutely those who worry about spree killers who are jumping at anomalies, and we already have what we view as a non-ideal but more viable way of handling them... get a gun, get a concealed permit, learn to use it, shoot the bad guy mugger or mass murderer.
People abuse the hell out of stats but in my experience the gun-control ones are worse about it. Now, I do like to differentiate gun control, I might disagree with someone who wants a license to carry a loaded gun on public property but it's sane and reasonable, at least if the grounds for license set terms the majority of the populace would meet, alternatively people who bring up home deaths and include deliberate suicides are falsifiers and manipulators and people who overly focused on magazine size or auto/semi are just kind of ignorant of how guns operate or firefights proceed. Then you've got the sorts who are just overwhelmed by the numbers, and see spree killers as a major cause of death when realistically being struck by lightning is higher. These are all very different ducks and I feel type 2 sorts are tricking types 3 and 4 and a lot of type 1's go along because they are convinced they can get what they consider 'sane laws' passed by riding the tide and offering the compromise.
Half a year is six months, we don't do meaningful stat analysis off every other that way. If two happen on the same day we do not say 'in the past day we've averaged 2 shootings a day', that's just bad stats. We look at a sample, traditionally less than 3 digits is very hazy and there's a reason I tend to sneer at statistical studies of twenty people. Might as well say Y is the most common letter used based of a sample of six, the word 'syzygy'. You look at a whole random page/paragragph, compare it to another random one, and if both show similiar results then you say, 'Oh, it's the Wheel of fortune auto-letters'
Like I said, I'd really need to see the whole discussion word for word, especially without you being a self-admitted non-expert, to be able to say 'this guys is a moron', and even then I'd prefer to have the gun in question on hand or at least a good schematic to feel comfortable saying 'nope' as opposed to 'hadn't thought of that'.
Not really what I was saying I'm afraid. I essentially consider all adult or near adult humans 'proven threats' to me and thus presumably public safety too. By God or Evolution we're an absurdly dangerous lot, and excluding those who are batshit-crazy or pretty crazy but crazy in a violent way I don't really consider your average convicted murderer much different then your average teenage kid. I definitely recognize mens rea I'm just not too sure about the 'criminal mind', tends to strike me as Phrenology v 2.0. I'm more concerned about people with a streak for irrational behavior then specific acts. Heck of a lot safer with a hypothetical professional mafia assassin then a girlfriend with a history of flipping out who thinks you've cheated on her.
What's relevant here is not punishment, when talking about gun control, because a gun is simply not a covert way of killing someone. They are stupid loud and draw attention and 911 calls. We're talking about crime prevention, making sure it doesn't happen, and that comes down to keeping guns out of the hands of someone who might use on for murder. Our problem is that, realistically, that's a lot of people, millions at least, and I would actually bet includes somewhere between 50% and 99.9% of the adult population. Various unforeseeable events pushed some of these people over the line and pushed some back from the cliff and some people that cliff is closer, realistically. I don't believe we have the means to screen for them, except where it is so damn obvious no expert screening is necessary or where their prior activities making it easy. Most of these guys really didn't stand out, and frankly I don't trust the hindsight 20/20 view, even less so knowing how fickle and malleable people's memories of their own attitude toward someone are. Give me high-quality film of someone's face all day long and I'll find a snapshot that makes them look like a villain and give me a touch of airbrushing I can make them look like a malevolent psychopath. And the human memory does a lot of airbrushing.
So, I'm just not confident we could realistically screen for those people. We might net some, sure, but it strikes me as something with massively diminishing returns. Triple the effort to get 10% more isn't usually a good use of limited resources.
Only in fiction. In reality if they know someone owns 3 specific guns they can come in and demand them on penalty of pain, if they know X simply owns a gun they can demand it, get one sacrificial, and not the others. As for outright searches, let me tell you how fucking hard it is to search out weapon caches sometime as an occupying army.... seriously, pin, haystack. People know a search is occurring they hide it under the floorboards or in a hole in the ground and proper searches of a home take hours by skilled searchers. Hundred million homes, probably 2 man hours to search a home properly for something gun sized, 2000 man hours a year a person... one hundred thousand trained searchers working full time for a year... yeah, not happening. More importantly though not happening over night, police and the like are relying on limited planning and coordination and cooperation and not much time. Hard to find someone's buried cache of rebel stuff if it's in a box in a field with a foot of dirt over it unless it happened recent enough you can't see it. Heaven forbid someone wraps the cache in asbestos or one of the other things that utterly screws a metal detector.
You would find that odd... they can demand you inform them of weapons on you and you are legally required to inform them of concealed weapons. This is like hitting a brick wall man, beyond just the whole 2nd amendment thing, a car is a device that's normal routine operation is dangerous and that routine operation requires use of public roads. There's nothing notably dangerous about a safed pistol in a holster. A person isn't going to accidentally discharge it into someone walking by them on the street, not any any significant rate. A gun on public property is 99.99% of the time not 'in use', a car is damn near the reverse. And no discharge of a gun on public property ever goes investigated. You don't have to prove you have a license to sit in a car or help push one down the road, you need it to operate the thing on the public road. A cop can't ask you - outside of hot pursuit - for license and registration of a car you're not operating. They damn well can do the same thing with a gun when it gets 'operated', it's not like you could fire one into the air on the sidewalk and just tell the cops 'Yeah, no, just bored'
As to the rest. Ballistic fingerprinting is over-rated, but again I have no problem with the FBI keeping its file and I've no problem with them having a database consisting of, say, and ID# column and a Y/N column where everyone's ID has that number somewhere and us making it a crime to sell a weapon without checking that database and a bigger crime to dell to the people with the 'N' in there. I wouldn't want it to be name and I'd prefer it not be people's SSN or license number, just some other randomly assigned number stuck on the ID, because I don't think anyone should be able to just look that up unless they are involved in the transaction. These sort of case-specific ID #'s get a lot easier with modern tech, an ID card might have dozens of little logo-bar codes tied into publicly accessible databases. I don't think it would be too effective though.
A certain political faction assumes criminals aren't universally stupid and people without felony records can be criminals. John, clean record, buys a gun, sells it to his friend with one. Even if we know John bought that specific gun its going to be very hard to prove in court if he's not a moron... thank god most criminals, caught or not, are... 'I lost it' 'I didn't even know it got stolen' or even 'Officers, I'd like to report a robbery' are pretty solid covers with burden of proof and all, and that's only effective if serial numbers are tracked, and can't just be filed off. There's damn little reason for an unconvicted felon to be afraid of punishment for re-sell unless they're literally making it a major business. Hence why I don't consider bans for minority groups very effective. I mean it barely works for cigarettes and that mostly because teens don't have the cash to overpay a blackmarket vendor for a consumable good, you only need to buy a gun once.
I find it amusing that you think the right wing trusts the NRA less than the government when it comes to guns
I agree with that argument, and would restate the whole concept of if they are on the street they are in a position to acquire a firearm non-conventionally. Lots of times it's a relative or lover/spouse/roommate they got it off of, there's no sane way to screen those out, and then there's the whole breaking and entering, black market, etc routes.
I doubt it would, look, a person plotting murder who can legally buy a gun will probably end up killing people with a legal gun, same as if I could acquire grenades legally I will use legal grenades rather than hunting for black market ones or homemade sorts. All that really means is people follow the path of least resistance and will pick a legal weapon over an illegal one if they think the illegal one is equal or insufficiently better for the task. If a man dreamed of murdering people with an AK specifically, it's quite possible a ban on them specifically but not M16's might make him pick a M16 instead of seeking out an illegal AK, it's very unlikely though he'd just give up his homicidal dream.
See notes on 'mandatory database' re: dictatorship, black market, theft.
Systematic training where gun safety is concerned is mostly about building in what amount to faux pas, one of the reasons I'd rather do it young and for almost everyone where that sort of stuff is way more effective and can be done by nearly any adult. Also I feel I've utterly rebutted the notion that a driver's license has jack realistic parallels to a gun. Also Missouri is the only state I know of that makes it legal to handle a firearm while intoxicated so the DUI comparison is weak at best.
Gravity still has infinite range though, so we are not talking about things having NO (only a negligible) effect on us at great distance.
Let me cut you off here, all the physical forces have 'infinite range' - in theory anyway - but the also propagate at c or slower, gravity included, those place we can't see anymore can't every gravitationally effect us further. If I magically conjure another gas giant into the solar system it's gravity wouldn't effect us until the light from it got here. The stuff that red shifts beyond the Observable Universe is still sending light and gravity our way, but neither will ever reach us or effect us.
Additionally, distant massive objects can still influence other distant massive objects between us and them, and the latter can in turn influence us. Even were neither of those things true, just because something is too far removed to affect us does not mean it no longer exists;
One could argue that it no longer exists, since it can not be detected in any fashion. For all practical purposes it may as well be an alternate Universe, those probably exist too. If the Universe is defined as all there is everywhere and when, then sure, it exists, but that's the definition we use for Multiverse or the Whole Shebang.
there could be a incredibly great difference between the Observable and Whole Universes (though of course the very nature of the first makes that impossible for us to determine.) Ultimately, "observable" is just a very sensible qualifier that discourages assumptions and reduces the likelihood of later embarrassment.
The core concept here is that Observable Universe is very important philosophically, is that if something can not interact in any fashion it can't conceivably be detected and thus discussing whether or not it is real becomes beyond academic. The universe seems to conspire to make the individual observer the only legitimate baseline for observation and I've always found that shiveringly solipsistic.
"Processed through the mind" is a hefty qualifier, and still an assumption. There remains reason to doubt its veracity, and it is unprovable.
Only if mind is taken as automatically synonymous to 'brain', rather than just as 'the part of I that thinks', which is cheerfully flexible, since it can include all of you or simply your brain or some supernatural quantity.
The latter is ONE criterion of axioms, but not the only one, and the former violates the criterion of self-evidence. You happen to see Jupiter come within 2° of the Moon the other night? My senses told me the latter was MUCH bigger, just as they tell me the moon covers more arc at the horizon than at azimuth, but of course my senses are filthy liars on both counts, and rather brazen ones since they persist in both falsehoods despite my brain exposing each long ago. Drugs, stress and illness can each cause completely unreliable hallucinations. Kant tells us we cannot be sure our senses accurately report all data, but Heisenberg tells us we CAN be sure they do NOT.
It's never been claimed - by anyone reasonably modern and serious anyway - that people's senses are totally accurate. Accuracy of observation isn't included as a necessity of one's ability to interact with the world around you and draw conclusions. A core think here is that those senses aren't lying to you, they are dutifully functioning within their physical limits, and your interpretation of the data is based on those mechanical limitations and your own incomplete interpretation. If your senses were lying to you we'd be in a different discussion altogether, one of the various variations of brain in a tank.
Existence is sure, else there would truly be naught to discuss: No Relativity, subjectivity nor Observer Effect, nor anything to debate them. All else is supposition more or less likely in proportion to total supporting evidence; it is nigh impossible for that evidence to reach the level of incontrovertible proof. Necessity is not validity.
Existence must be treated as a given, else there would be very little point in discussing it. That doesn't mean it is definitely so, there are detailed criticisms of this by guys like Bernard Williams if you want to review them. Not even including that in a totally natural, non-supernatural universe 'thought' has to be considered a totally arbitrary and meaningless concept, something I've always found vaguely amusing as a person who is trained to apply thought to determine the natural workings of the Universe. "I" and "think" do not actually appear to be noteworthy quantities in our universe.
As Tom Bosley would say, "That's Hollywood," which today seems to mean gleefully violating all our treasured childhood memories because they so deeply inspired some producer he wants to remake them in his own image. "I want to do something ORIGINAL!" Yeah? Try creating your OWN world then; if you want to do the classics, leave them as you found them, because they are not your exclusive property (really.) About the only person who has any excuse for such behavior is Lucas, who at least created the worlds and stories he butchers for (more) fame and profit now.</rant>
Can't help but think Lucas, the only one 'justified' to do it, did it worse than anyone else. Leading me to believe most writers (Like Brandon Sanderson) who get to follow up face shitloads of unfair criticism. I've usually enjoyed Expanded Universe stuff from almost anyone.
It's establishing legal competence that's my sticking point, find me a good way to do it - doesn't have to be airtight, nothing ever is - and I'd likely change my tune.
Okay, you listed 3 things there but I'm afraid you misunderstood what I meant by 'competence' in this case, I was thinking the 'adult of sound mind' aspect. Your specific three are fine by me, though I'd do it differently, in terms of competent to fire a weapon. For one thing, a blind man may buy a car, he just may not personally operate it on public roads, which is what a license lets you do. Remember that Castle Doctrine is a very real and important thing in US law and of course our common morality. A person need not have a license to own a car, just to operate it on public property, if we were talking permit to carry (concealed or otherwise) on public property then we're in a different sphere then purchase, or carry/use on private property. My hypothetical 15 year old daughter can not buy a pistol nor drive a car on the road, but she may certainly fire a pistol (anyone may in self-defense even felons) under my direction on my property or someone's private gun range, if they permit it. Same I'm pretty sure she can own a car, but she may certainly drive on my property with my permission and supervision, though I'm not sure the latter is actually required. So I think in this regard we'd be talking 'competent to operate' and that it would have to apply only to public ground. From a realistic perspective I'd want to train my kid in gun safety, especially pistols, from a relatively young age, and were I legally blind for instance I'd actually consider it more important since I couldn't protect them as well. I'd also feel pretty infringed on if my aim, as a legally blind but sound of mind adult, someone told me that even though I can make out people decently a ten feet I can't own/operate a gun when an awful lot of self-defense cases take place at that proximity. Hell a blind man could make a good case to me that he doesn't need to be able to see to shoot a mugger who is physically touching him and speaking, not exactly a freakishly uncommon and unlikely situation.
In any event though I meant 'mentally competent', outside of very severe and obvious cases where the person shouldn't be allowed in public without a minder, if at all, it's getting into shaky ground for me to determine if they are or not.
Again, there is nothing radical or novel about any of that; it is exactly the same thing we do for every vehicle from mopeds to big rigs (except, of course, that I would require criminal and mental health record checks at the start.) I know some people oppose that for guns, but I am not sure those who do include anyone but the same radical fringe that insists thumb-printing drivers license applicants is "the Mark of the Beast." They are beneath consideration and relevance, except insofar as they should be subject to prosecution for shooting without a license just as they are for driving without one.
'Shooting without a license' is a non-existent thing. So is driving without a license, because that's actually operating a motor vehicle on public roads/property without permission (license) to do so. If the 2nd amendment didn't exist, then that would be legal and parallel, to ban carry or operation of a gun on public property. It would still be different then purchase and would still run into the issue that it is very hard to establish routine carrying of a gun represents a plausible hazard to the public. Whereas routine operation of a car obviously does. It is already illegal to simply discharge a firearm on public property or someone else's private property without their permission, or even on your property in a manner that can easily translate to someone else's property, like an apartment building, that just gets overridden for self-defense. But your example is void, I can not simply walk up and down the street randomly firing into the air or even waving the gun around. We've already got laws for that. We also hit the difference that operating a car is an entirely different cup of tea from a gun. Routine gun use is simply carrying the weapon, exposing no realistic risk to others, routine car operation does expose people to danger.
True, but unless someone wants to jerry-rig something then use it without testing,
'without testing' is a big bad assumption there.
hoping but not KNOWING it will work, that usually is a problem. A wooden mallet works well for the first couple nails,
Probably a couple hundred unless its balsa wood, if nails are people...
but reaching the thousandth nail without snapping the mallets head off the shaft and/or gouging holes in it can be tricky. Breivik demonstrated a sufficiently determined, careful and knowledgeable person can find a way, but I am QUITE weary of people using anomalous exceptions to the rule to argue reasonable precautions NEVER work.
There's hypocrisy from our perspective in basing rules around spree killers, since they are a themselves 'anomalous exceptions'. Your odds of ever even encountering one, even just let them bum your lighter for a second, are very low. Your odds of being involved with a violent crime (committing, suffering, directly witnessing) are far higher than your odds of ever even sitting in the same diner with a spree killer. From our perspective it is absolutely those who worry about spree killers who are jumping at anomalies, and we already have what we view as a non-ideal but more viable way of handling them... get a gun, get a concealed permit, learn to use it, shoot the bad guy mugger or mass murderer.
Whether it is the gun lobby claiming Breivik proves all gun control a pointless expensive failure or the anti-gun lobby claiming Nancy Lanza proves guns useless for self-defense, it still strikes me as people using stats like a drunk uses lamp posts.
People abuse the hell out of stats but in my experience the gun-control ones are worse about it. Now, I do like to differentiate gun control, I might disagree with someone who wants a license to carry a loaded gun on public property but it's sane and reasonable, at least if the grounds for license set terms the majority of the populace would meet, alternatively people who bring up home deaths and include deliberate suicides are falsifiers and manipulators and people who overly focused on magazine size or auto/semi are just kind of ignorant of how guns operate or firefights proceed. Then you've got the sorts who are just overwhelmed by the numbers, and see spree killers as a major cause of death when realistically being struck by lightning is higher. These are all very different ducks and I feel type 2 sorts are tricking types 3 and 4 and a lot of type 1's go along because they are convinced they can get what they consider 'sane laws' passed by riding the tide and offering the compromise.
Just to be clear: In the past half-year we have averaged one mass shooting every two months; THAT has gone beyond the anomalous stage.
Half a year is six months, we don't do meaningful stat analysis off every other that way. If two happen on the same day we do not say 'in the past day we've averaged 2 shootings a day', that's just bad stats. We look at a sample, traditionally less than 3 digits is very hazy and there's a reason I tend to sneer at statistical studies of twenty people. Might as well say Y is the most common letter used based of a sample of six, the word 'syzygy'. You look at a whole random page/paragragph, compare it to another random one, and if both show similiar results then you say, 'Oh, it's the Wheel of fortune auto-letters'
I took the responder to mean filing the firing pin is needless if a gun has an auto sear and pointless if it does not.
Like I said, I'd really need to see the whole discussion word for word, especially without you being a self-admitted non-expert, to be able to say 'this guys is a moron', and even then I'd prefer to have the gun in question on hand or at least a good schematic to feel comfortable saying 'nope' as opposed to 'hadn't thought of that'.
I am the first to agree many people with criminal records and/or diagnosed mental illness are on the streets who should not be, if that is what you are saying. Until/unless we do better at keeping proven threats to public safety safely locked away we will have a proportionately high need to monitor those walking around free. It is contradictory, however, to say the high rate of premature release and recidivism makes guns vital for self-defense but precautions against felonious possession needless. If unreformed criminals are so dangerous they justify allowing anyone the means to kill them, they are so dangerous they justify making sure said criminals get NO guns. We cannot have it both ways.
Not really what I was saying I'm afraid. I essentially consider all adult or near adult humans 'proven threats' to me and thus presumably public safety too. By God or Evolution we're an absurdly dangerous lot, and excluding those who are batshit-crazy or pretty crazy but crazy in a violent way I don't really consider your average convicted murderer much different then your average teenage kid. I definitely recognize mens rea I'm just not too sure about the 'criminal mind', tends to strike me as Phrenology v 2.0. I'm more concerned about people with a streak for irrational behavior then specific acts. Heck of a lot safer with a hypothetical professional mafia assassin then a girlfriend with a history of flipping out who thinks you've cheated on her.
What's relevant here is not punishment, when talking about gun control, because a gun is simply not a covert way of killing someone. They are stupid loud and draw attention and 911 calls. We're talking about crime prevention, making sure it doesn't happen, and that comes down to keeping guns out of the hands of someone who might use on for murder. Our problem is that, realistically, that's a lot of people, millions at least, and I would actually bet includes somewhere between 50% and 99.9% of the adult population. Various unforeseeable events pushed some of these people over the line and pushed some back from the cliff and some people that cliff is closer, realistically. I don't believe we have the means to screen for them, except where it is so damn obvious no expert screening is necessary or where their prior activities making it easy. Most of these guys really didn't stand out, and frankly I don't trust the hindsight 20/20 view, even less so knowing how fickle and malleable people's memories of their own attitude toward someone are. Give me high-quality film of someone's face all day long and I'll find a snapshot that makes them look like a villain and give me a touch of airbrushing I can make them look like a malevolent psychopath. And the human memory does a lot of airbrushing.
So, I'm just not confident we could realistically screen for those people. We might net some, sure, but it strikes me as something with massively diminishing returns. Triple the effort to get 10% more isn't usually a good use of limited resources.
If the shit hits the fan the dicators army will check every house for guns, registered or not.
Only in fiction. In reality if they know someone owns 3 specific guns they can come in and demand them on penalty of pain, if they know X simply owns a gun they can demand it, get one sacrificial, and not the others. As for outright searches, let me tell you how fucking hard it is to search out weapon caches sometime as an occupying army.... seriously, pin, haystack. People know a search is occurring they hide it under the floorboards or in a hole in the ground and proper searches of a home take hours by skilled searchers. Hundred million homes, probably 2 man hours to search a home properly for something gun sized, 2000 man hours a year a person... one hundred thousand trained searchers working full time for a year... yeah, not happening. More importantly though not happening over night, police and the like are relying on limited planning and coordination and cooperation and not much time. Hard to find someone's buried cache of rebel stuff if it's in a box in a field with a foot of dirt over it unless it happened recent enough you can't see it. Heaven forbid someone wraps the cache in asbestos or one of the other things that utterly screws a metal detector.
Background check data should be purged immediately after verification (though the FBI maintains NICS, and I am not suggesting the FBI purge its criminal databases,) but there is nothing wrong with licensing and registration, even ballistics records. It greatly aids tracking guns used in crimes back to the criminal. I find it odd a cop (with cause) can pull someone over and demand "license and regisration" for a car, but not a gun.
You would find that odd... they can demand you inform them of weapons on you and you are legally required to inform them of concealed weapons. This is like hitting a brick wall man, beyond just the whole 2nd amendment thing, a car is a device that's normal routine operation is dangerous and that routine operation requires use of public roads. There's nothing notably dangerous about a safed pistol in a holster. A person isn't going to accidentally discharge it into someone walking by them on the street, not any any significant rate. A gun on public property is 99.99% of the time not 'in use', a car is damn near the reverse. And no discharge of a gun on public property ever goes investigated. You don't have to prove you have a license to sit in a car or help push one down the road, you need it to operate the thing on the public road. A cop can't ask you - outside of hot pursuit - for license and registration of a car you're not operating. They damn well can do the same thing with a gun when it gets 'operated', it's not like you could fire one into the air on the sidewalk and just tell the cops 'Yeah, no, just bored'
As to the rest. Ballistic fingerprinting is over-rated, but again I have no problem with the FBI keeping its file and I've no problem with them having a database consisting of, say, and ID# column and a Y/N column where everyone's ID has that number somewhere and us making it a crime to sell a weapon without checking that database and a bigger crime to dell to the people with the 'N' in there. I wouldn't want it to be name and I'd prefer it not be people's SSN or license number, just some other randomly assigned number stuck on the ID, because I don't think anyone should be able to just look that up unless they are involved in the transaction. These sort of case-specific ID #'s get a lot easier with modern tech, an ID card might have dozens of little logo-bar codes tied into publicly accessible databases. I don't think it would be too effective though.
However, at this stage of the game, I would be overjoyed to let that await a later day (if any) if we had the database of people who could not buy guns. To some extent we do, but it only applies to federally licensed gun sellers, and a small majority of states do not fully participate. A CERTAIN political faction demanded and got many exceptions and loopholes in that legislation. Fact is, the mental health and criminal records are already out there and freely available to all gun sellers: Many just refuse to use them.
A certain political faction assumes criminals aren't universally stupid and people without felony records can be criminals. John, clean record, buys a gun, sells it to his friend with one. Even if we know John bought that specific gun its going to be very hard to prove in court if he's not a moron... thank god most criminals, caught or not, are... 'I lost it' 'I didn't even know it got stolen' or even 'Officers, I'd like to report a robbery' are pretty solid covers with burden of proof and all, and that's only effective if serial numbers are tracked, and can't just be filed off. There's damn little reason for an unconvicted felon to be afraid of punishment for re-sell unless they're literally making it a major business. Hence why I don't consider bans for minority groups very effective. I mean it barely works for cigarettes and that mostly because teens don't have the cash to overpay a blackmarket vendor for a consumable good, you only need to buy a gun once.
If we want ANY public oversight of such a system, it MUST be government run and thus publicly accountable.
I find it amusing that you think the right wing trusts the NRA less than the government when it comes to guns
A number of them did: Charles Whitman, Jared Loughner, Seung-Hui Cho, Adam Lanza. In Chos case, Virginia STATE law prohibited selling guns to anyone currently receiving mental health treatment—but the gun lobby used the "if they are on the street, they should not be stigmatized by denying their gun rights" argument to remove that provision for outpatients. Consequently, Chos legally bought guns DESPITE court ordered outpatient mental health treatment (as part of prosecution for stalking after classmates said they feared he would become a mass shooter and his school expelled him.)
I agree with that argument, and would restate the whole concept of if they are on the street they are in a position to acquire a firearm non-conventionally. Lots of times it's a relative or lover/spouse/roommate they got it off of, there's no sane way to screen those out, and then there's the whole breaking and entering, black market, etc routes.
Checking mental health records will not stop anyone without one, no, but would stop most everyone who DOES. We are back to the same old thing: Anything that does not stop EVERYONE, be it guns for defense against them or laws agaisnt them getting guns, is a pointless expensive failure. Those are not rebuttals, but EXCUSES even most of their proponents do not really believe. They are obstacles to effective reasonable gun policy, but actually ENABLE murder.
I doubt it would, look, a person plotting murder who can legally buy a gun will probably end up killing people with a legal gun, same as if I could acquire grenades legally I will use legal grenades rather than hunting for black market ones or homemade sorts. All that really means is people follow the path of least resistance and will pick a legal weapon over an illegal one if they think the illegal one is equal or insufficiently better for the task. If a man dreamed of murdering people with an AK specifically, it's quite possible a ban on them specifically but not M16's might make him pick a M16 instead of seeking out an illegal AK, it's very unlikely though he'd just give up his homicidal dream.
As noted, their inconsistent "logic" is not my fault and should not be my problem. A database would almost inevitably help, and trying it would burden no one.
See notes on 'mandatory database' re: dictatorship, black market, theft.
I prefer relying on systematic training rather than cultural faux pas (even the combination does not prevent reckless driving, and even the addition of laws does not prevent drunk driving, but no one suggests we should discard driver licensing and laws against drunk driving as expensive failures.) Applying much the same comprehensive oversight and certification standards to guns as we do to cars would be no more a patch job for the former than for the latter. And, ultimately, allowing the mentally ill and/or criminals to go on shooting rampages, then killing them, is so far from an ideal solution it does not qualify as a "solution" at all.
Systematic training where gun safety is concerned is mostly about building in what amount to faux pas, one of the reasons I'd rather do it young and for almost everyone where that sort of stuff is way more effective and can be done by nearly any adult. Also I feel I've utterly rebutted the notion that a driver's license has jack realistic parallels to a gun. Also Missouri is the only state I know of that makes it legal to handle a firearm while intoxicated so the DUI comparison is weak at best.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
This message last edited by Isaac on 28/12/2012 at 01:13:33 AM
When guns are a big national issue, how do reporters & pundits not know facts about them?
21/12/2012 05:33:14 PM
- 1532 Views
You don't hunt by walking into a classroom and shooting 20 deer
21/12/2012 05:56:16 PM
- 985 Views
You're actually not right on that one
21/12/2012 07:49:53 PM
- 913 Views
That wasn't the point I was making
21/12/2012 09:49:40 PM
- 860 Views
You should probably clarify it then
21/12/2012 10:47:26 PM
- 1016 Views
His post was perfectly clear. Yours seemed like a response to an entirely different post.
21/12/2012 10:53:39 PM
- 1171 Views
Explain that remark, it is not obvious to me *NM*
21/12/2012 11:00:10 PM
- 527 Views
I think
21/12/2012 11:13:34 PM
- 847 Views
Thats' easy, there is simply no such thing as a 'hunting rifle'
21/12/2012 11:17:41 PM
- 856 Views
I'd say the expert gunsmith
21/12/2012 11:28:02 PM
- 897 Views
I'm also an expert at math and physics, should I be more forgiving about those too?
22/12/2012 12:38:45 AM
- 843 Views
Re: I'm also an expert at math and physics, should I be more forgiving about those too?
22/12/2012 01:00:18 AM
- 870 Views
Well I appreciate your calling it pedantic when you aren't an expert, thanks for correcting me
22/12/2012 01:15:08 AM
- 928 Views
Re: Well I appreciate your calling it pedantic when you aren't an expert, thanks for correcting me
22/12/2012 09:35:38 AM
- 1056 Views
I thought I was being perfectly clear.
21/12/2012 10:57:35 PM
- 863 Views
A bit of an aside, but I was reading that the gun used in the attack can be bought in Canada too.
21/12/2012 06:14:01 PM
- 868 Views
you're largely correct, which is why we need stronger laws on ownership not guns per se
21/12/2012 09:39:14 PM
- 825 Views
I can't think of a better reason than self defense
21/12/2012 10:33:26 PM
- 882 Views
He is right about Australia
21/12/2012 10:46:27 PM
- 862 Views
No kidding
21/12/2012 10:59:28 PM
- 849 Views
If you knew all that
21/12/2012 11:02:38 PM
- 874 Views
Because I used wiki of course
21/12/2012 11:21:25 PM
- 921 Views
He said ""self defense" is not a valid excuse to own a lethal weapon"
21/12/2012 11:34:59 PM
- 796 Views
Yes,which is un-cited, but I did prove it's a valid excuse to use one, so...
22/12/2012 12:36:19 AM
- 917 Views
The difference between allowing someone to defend themselves with a gun they have
22/12/2012 01:09:40 AM
- 836 Views
Which you apparently think they shouldn't be able to obtain? Catch-22 comes to mind.
22/12/2012 01:17:25 AM
- 879 Views
Re: Which you apparently think they shouldn't be able to obtain? Catch-22 comes to mind.
22/12/2012 09:51:51 AM
- 898 Views
A wood chipper isn't a gun, and evidence without proof isn't evidence
22/12/2012 06:10:34 PM
- 847 Views
If only you'd asked him for a citation rather than just saying you thought he was wrong eh? *NM*
23/12/2012 12:29:30 AM
- 637 Views
I think you are on the right track, but to the wrong destination; "lethal weapon" is redundant.
21/12/2012 11:05:29 PM
- 856 Views
My read is that the 2nd Amendment not only allows, but mandates, cop-killer bullets.
22/12/2012 12:45:04 AM
- 897 Views
Does the Second Amendment protect the rights of felons and the mentally incompetent to have guns?
22/12/2012 02:35:16 AM
- 1061 Views
Court rulings have determined that your Constitutional Rights can be restricted for felony/insanity *NM*
23/12/2012 12:59:31 PM
- 557 Views
Activist judges should not make law.
23/12/2012 02:04:42 PM
- 871 Views
I agree, but the courts have already ruled that way so we are stuck. *NM*
26/12/2012 03:03:35 PM
- 523 Views
Then I guess we need the courts to rule gun owners need screening, training and licensing.
26/12/2012 03:46:05 PM
- 865 Views
No, if you want to restrict the 2nd (or any other amendment) amend the Constitution
26/12/2012 07:56:19 PM
- 836 Views
I do not want to restrict the Second Amendment, only enact the regulations it explictly allows.
26/12/2012 08:50:09 PM
- 899 Views
I disagree with your interpretation. The simple EXISTANCE of the BoR makes it binding on the states
27/12/2012 03:46:17 PM
- 863 Views
"Congress shall make no law..." restricts the STATES? How, exactly?
28/12/2012 03:03:19 PM
- 826 Views
The 2nd amendment does not mention Congress in any way. There is that reading issue again.
28/12/2012 10:02:41 PM
- 777 Views
You said, "the Bill of Rights," not "the Second Amendment."
28/12/2012 11:10:00 PM
- 866 Views
Copy-N-Paste, get over it. we are specifically discussing the 2nd amendment, not everything.
29/12/2012 02:24:30 PM
- 755 Views
Some semi-autos are easily modified for full auto fire, making the distinction one w/o a difference.
21/12/2012 10:53:59 PM
- 929 Views
Correction: virtually all semi-automatics are easily convertable
21/12/2012 11:23:35 PM
- 873 Views
I have seen nothing on turning a semi-auto BAR into a fully automatic one.
22/12/2012 01:11:12 AM
- 791 Views
What's a BAR? In any event, link a diagram and I'll let you know
22/12/2012 01:26:31 AM
- 787 Views
Confusingly, there are two: The BAR you and I think of, and the "Browning BAR," a current semi-auto
22/12/2012 01:07:30 PM
- 901 Views
Department of Redundancy Department gets to name a lot of stuff, like "Milky Way Galaxy"
22/12/2012 05:01:45 PM
- 1062 Views
It only bothers me when people who know better speak of "the Glieseian solar system."
26/12/2012 05:33:34 PM
- 945 Views
Both terms are pretty stuck now
26/12/2012 10:48:38 PM
- 1011 Views
You realize that encourages rather than discourages my opposition to the usage, right?
27/12/2012 01:23:15 AM
- 789 Views
Well I can't say it surprises
27/12/2012 04:29:06 AM
- 726 Views
No one expects the Online Inquisition!
27/12/2012 05:20:44 PM
- 737 Views
I've enjoyed most reboots
28/12/2012 01:06:05 AM
- 682 Views
Yes the media is using terms incorrectly but the point still stands.
22/12/2012 03:02:18 AM
- 785 Views
Re: Yes the media is using terms incorrectly but the point still stands.
22/12/2012 04:12:30 AM
- 846 Views
Yes people can always still kill each other, humans are very ingenuitive
22/12/2012 04:42:04 AM
- 817 Views
I took a driving exam when I was 16, and have never been tested since, nor will I ever be.
23/12/2012 01:17:05 PM
- 963 Views
Never is a long time; just renewing a license requires retaking the eye exam most places.
23/12/2012 02:16:54 PM
- 883 Views
Rather hard to do an eye exam online or through the mail.
26/12/2012 03:08:06 PM
- 967 Views
Yes, it is, which is why I have always had to go by DPS for a new license.
26/12/2012 03:50:04 PM
- 792 Views
Tennessee and Florida pass them out like candy. For several years TN offered a no ID license
26/12/2012 08:02:39 PM
- 801 Views
I still find it odd they require no eye test, that either allows the blind drivers licenses.
26/12/2012 08:58:57 PM
- 845 Views
Oh yeah, we have wandered off course *shrug*
27/12/2012 03:55:55 PM
- 951 Views
Voter registration while getting a drivers license is distinct from the ease of licensing.
28/12/2012 03:35:34 PM
- 925 Views
Re: Voter registration while getting a drivers license is distinct from the ease of licensing.
28/12/2012 10:14:32 PM
- 721 Views
If you can prove someone voted illegally, call the ACLU and claim your $1000.
28/12/2012 11:18:38 PM
- 877 Views
puhleeze.... election fraud is a fact. Pick a state, ANY state, ANY election...
29/12/2012 02:41:40 PM
- 831 Views
Clip size is meaningless, semi-autos and even revolvers can be reloaded VERY quickly. *NM*
23/12/2012 01:20:59 PM
- 521 Views
1997 North Hollywood Shootout
22/12/2012 04:07:39 AM
- 926 Views
typical NRA bullshit response
22/12/2012 04:53:40 AM
- 865 Views
typical Moondog bullshit response
23/12/2012 01:06:12 PM
- 871 Views
of course! there is no connection between having a gun and shooting someone. got it
23/12/2012 02:33:18 PM
- 757 Views
There is no corelation between decidng to kill someone and what tool you use.
26/12/2012 03:11:08 PM
- 817 Views
By that logic no one needs a gun for self-defense; a coffee mug is perfectly adequate.
26/12/2012 09:06:51 PM
- 866 Views
I can kill you with my coffee mug... RESPECT THE MUG but I wouldn't, I might spill the coffee.
27/12/2012 04:08:52 PM
- 729 Views
So you are saying you do not need a gun then? I will keep mine anyway, thanks.
28/12/2012 04:19:03 PM
- 817 Views
You covered a bunch of different things, and completely misrepresentted what I wrote
28/12/2012 10:28:24 PM
- 859 Views
Home made explosives are pretty much always illegal; I did not want to overlook legal ones.
28/12/2012 11:44:19 PM
- 1052 Views
Re: Home made explosives are pretty much always illegal; I did not want to overlook legal ones.
29/12/2012 03:31:01 PM
- 802 Views
Laws against murder failed to prevent that, too; clearly they are ineffective and should be repealed
22/12/2012 06:02:24 AM
- 979 Views
Such laws were never intended for prevention, they define actions that will be punished. *NM*
23/12/2012 12:57:57 PM
- 558 Views
So do laws against getting a gun without screening, training and certification.
23/12/2012 02:01:32 PM
- 797 Views
Then CHANGE the Constitution, don't ignore it. *NM*
26/12/2012 03:12:11 PM
- 493 Views
I am not suggesting either changing or ignoring the Constitution.
26/12/2012 04:01:02 PM
- 906 Views
Yes you are.
26/12/2012 08:06:01 PM
- 706 Views
Learn logic, and stop needlessly trying to teach me grammar.
26/12/2012 08:55:25 PM
- 873 Views
Lear to read, and I won't have to
27/12/2012 04:28:59 PM
- 932 Views
Ironically, you misspelled "learn."
28/12/2012 05:15:17 PM
- 1165 Views
I know, I thought about going back and fixing the typo, but thought it was funny so I left it. *NM*
28/12/2012 10:34:06 PM
- 520 Views
2 commas or 4 makes no difference one is a 12D the other is a sentance.
28/12/2012 10:55:31 PM
- 801 Views
It makes a huge difference when (incorrectly) claiming to know the text.
28/12/2012 11:31:51 PM
- 1113 Views
and by REGULATED, the authors meeant "able to use it effectively"
29/12/2012 03:47:57 PM
- 870 Views
You are wrong.
22/12/2012 12:14:40 PM
- 883 Views
That explains much; I read somewhere Brits are averse to it.
22/12/2012 01:17:15 PM
- 806 Views
What bemuses me about this thing with Adam Lanza, is that his mother had 5 registered guns
23/12/2012 07:10:26 AM
- 902 Views
She also had many knives, and blunt objecs around the house. Tools are only as good as the user
23/12/2012 01:10:58 PM
- 895 Views
So clearly she wasn't prepared enough... btw, do we know she was sleeping?
27/12/2012 10:52:03 AM
- 833 Views
That she 1) was in bed, 2) had guns for self-defense and 3) was shot 4 times strongly suggests sleep
28/12/2012 11:49:20 PM
- 906 Views
She was asleep with him in the house.
23/12/2012 02:24:47 PM
- 875 Views
LOOK, look, there is another one...
26/12/2012 03:13:45 PM
- 815 Views
I find the absolutist ant/pro-gun positions equally dangerous and absurd.
26/12/2012 04:20:37 PM
- 791 Views
So we should just *kinda* ignore the Constitution *this* time... But what about NEXT time...
26/12/2012 08:08:12 PM
- 775 Views
No, we should enact gun regulation the Constitution explicitly empowers.
26/12/2012 09:02:12 PM
- 791 Views
Which would be... NONE. *NM*
27/12/2012 04:31:53 PM
- 497 Views
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state...."
28/12/2012 05:14:49 PM
- 784 Views
Your point being?
27/12/2012 10:47:29 AM
- 774 Views
I am certain it would have been better, though not good, if she had been awake and shot him.
27/12/2012 02:16:13 PM
- 891 Views
So the situation of Nancy and Adam shooting at each other
28/12/2012 07:44:12 AM
- 900 Views
No, I believe they were both mentally incompetent to have guns; that does not mean EVERYONE is.
28/12/2012 02:19:51 PM
- 818 Views
As a father, I would rather kill my own child than have him kill 26 other people.
27/12/2012 04:35:02 PM
- 730 Views
And as a father, you are somehow clairvoyant?
28/12/2012 07:43:08 AM
- 787 Views
Nice flippant unthinking reply, you and moondog should get together. *NM*
28/12/2012 04:55:14 PM
- 540 Views
How is my reply flippant? Your statement was unthinking, not mine.
29/12/2012 06:59:04 AM
- 825 Views
YOU asked if it would have been better for her to kill her own child instead, I answered.
29/12/2012 03:52:02 PM
- 834 Views
I asked if a shoot out between mother and son had been better, not whether she should have killed
29/12/2012 08:54:09 PM
- 771 Views
You make no sense.
31/12/2012 06:07:50 PM
- 843 Views
I make no sense to you because you probably just don't understand my point.
01/01/2013 08:09:11 AM
- 921 Views
Maybe the heat death of the univers occurs before you finally have a cohearant thought
01/01/2013 07:34:31 PM
- 835 Views
You do realize that resorting to personal attacks reveal an inability to make sound arguments? *NM*
02/01/2013 06:01:33 PM
- 592 Views
That is not an ad hominem attack, and your prior post was not very logically coherent
02/01/2013 08:59:16 PM
- 917 Views
Instead of actually showing why my arguments would be incoherent or why I'm immature, he just said
05/01/2013 02:02:23 AM
- 914 Views