Active shooter?

[mistermack]

I think I have a solution to the open carry question.

Keep it legal to open carry, but make it obligatory to use it. So, if you open carry, then once a year you have to fight a gun duel to the death with another open carrier, like in High Noon.

The gun nuts would love it, and think of the tv ratings it would get.
I'm betting they could fund a free health service from the tv rights, so everybody wins.

[Forty Two]

I think I have a solution to the open carry question.

Keep it legal to open carry, but make it obligatory to use it. So, if you open carry, then once a year you have to fight a gun duel to the death with another open carrier, like in High Noon.

The gun nuts would love it, and think of the tv ratings it would get.
I'm betting they could fund a free health service from the tv rights, so everybody wins.

Even where it's legal to open carry, hardly anyone open carries except law enforcement. I lived in an open carry state for 15 years, and saw one guy with a side arm that wasn't a cop.

[Joe]

I think I have a solution to the open carry question.

Keep it legal to open carry, but make it obligatory to use it. So, if you open carry, then once a year you have to fight a gun duel to the death with another open carrier, like in High Noon.

The gun nuts would love it, and think of the tv ratings it would get.
I'm betting they could fund a free health service from the tv rights, so everybody wins.

Even where it's legal to open carry, hardly anyone open carries except law enforcement. I lived in an open carry state for 15 years, and saw one guy with a side arm that wasn't a cop.

Yeah, I've been here 35 years, and seen maybe 15 people open carrying, most of them in the last few years. I read somewhere we had about 340,000 active concealed carry permits in the state, and our population is 5.6 million.

[pErvinalia]

I'd carry a fucking machine gun openly in an open carry state (and machine guns were legal). Why fuck around?

[Forty Two]

What students want
Initially organized by the Women's March youth branch, the National Student Walkout demanded three key actions from Congress:
-- Ban assault weapons;
-- Require universal background checks before gun sales;
-- Pass a gun violence restraining order law that would allow courts to disarm people who display warning signs of violent behavior.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/14/us/n ... index.html

Of those options, the best idea is to require universal background checks closing the gun show and private sale loopholes. I think with today's technology we can have quick background checks, and determine if someone has a criminal conviction which would prohibit the sale. Also the gun violence restraining order could work, but there would have to be careful protections for due process, and very good specification of what these "warning signs" would include. The Devil will be in the Details.

The assault weapons ban I could go for if there is adequate specificity as to what constitutes an assault weapon so it doesn't become a de facto semiautomatic ban. However, I am intrigued by things like banning those weapons with pistol grips and detachable magazines. I am curious if that would leave sufficient semiautomatic hunting rifles available that it can be said that the right to keep and bear arms has not been infringed. The details are important, because some proposals expansively define assault weapon to a level that includes popular hunting rifles.

So, such proposals need more detail, but I'm not opposed to many forms of gun control, in principle. But, I trust neither the NRA folks, nor the "Enough" folks, to define these things without significant scrutiny.

[pErvinalia]

As an aside, why are machine guns banned? I would have thought that if you were to fight a tyrannical government, machine guns would be bloody handy.

[Forty Two]

I think I have a solution to the open carry question.

Keep it legal to open carry, but make it obligatory to use it. So, if you open carry, then once a year you have to fight a gun duel to the death with another open carrier, like in High Noon.

The gun nuts would love it, and think of the tv ratings it would get.
I'm betting they could fund a free health service from the tv rights, so everybody wins.

Even where it's legal to open carry, hardly anyone open carries except law enforcement. I lived in an open carry state for 15 years, and saw one guy with a side arm that wasn't a cop.

Yeah, I've been here 35 years, and seen maybe 15 people open carrying, most of them in the last few years. I read somewhere we had about 340,000 active concealed carry permits in the state, and our population is 5.6 million.

Open carry is kind of rare, I think, unless someone is on their way to a hunting trip, or to the range. Most people put the weapons in a carry case. Rifles I've seen people holding on their backs and such, but usually they're dressed in camo and ready for deer season.

I recall when I first moved to the midwest, I was surprised at the sheer number of people who went hunting. It was a holiday at the auto companies, because pretty much too many factory workers would call in sick on the first day of deer season that they figured they might as well just let them have the day off, lol.

This is the other side of the gun control coin. The anti-gun folks need to have some reasonable acknowledgment that not everyone shudders in fear at the sight of a gun, and not everyone has a gun because they are shuddering in fear. I would say the vast majority of pro-gun people have them for sport first, self-defense second, and when they own them they are neither wild-eyed crazy people, nor are they paranoid that people are out to get them.

I think the anti-gun folks would make more headway in getting reasonable registration, licensure and background check processes in place, if they would not make the debate between the gun nuts and/or evil gunner vs. the good, kind, caring, and intelligent anti-gunners. That just gets the former to dig in their heels and say "fuck you." I was with a group of friends a couple weeks ago, and the topic came up, and that sentiment was expressed quite clearly by a couple of the pro-gun folks. They were like, the behavior of the anti-gun crowd and the insulting way they present their arguments makes the pro-gunners want to just make sure there are even fewer regulations and laws - i.e. - "oh, I'm a nutcase and evil? Well, go fuck yourself, then." Don't underestimate that reaction. It's hard to win people over by calling them crazy and/or evil.

[Forty Two]

As an aside, why are machine guns banned? I would have thought that if you were to fight a tyrannical government, machine guns would be bloody handy.

It's not exactly a ban. http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/02/act ... -guns-u-s/

You pose an interesting question, which is not answered by reading the law in question (National Firearms Act of 1934 as amended). It is also not covered by an Supreme Court Opinion, because it has not been challenged. The closest SCOTUS opinion is the "sawed off shotgun" case, where it found that sawed off shotguns were not part of the 2nd amendment because they were not shown to be military weapons.

That logic would not apply to machine guns, which are military weapons. So, implicitly, the sawed off shotgun leaves room for machine guns to be second amendment protected. But, a court could also find that for some reason machine guns are not an "arm" as envisaged by the Second Amendment. But, SCOTUS has never ruled on that issue.

The NFA is a law under the internal revenue code, so when they passed it, they passed it as a tax law. They didn't outright "ban," but they said that anyone manufacturing the guns have to have a special license from the ATF, and then any private individiual who wants to buy one has to get a special license, with basically an anal cavity check from the ATF which takes about a year and costs a ton of money, and then they can only buy one made before 1986. So, hardly anyone has one, and the gubmint know precisely who said people are. And, nobody yet has managed to challenge it up the appeal process. The gun lobby is probably very careful about such suits, because they would see a huge risk that such a bright line (the difference between full auto and not full auto) would be an easy one for the SCOTUS to draw. The SCOTUS could say, "this is more like a grenade launcher or a surface to air missile, than a musket or bolt action rifle, so it's not really what the 'founders' envisioned as an arm."

So, it's hard to answer "why" they are basically banned. But, my thought on it is that (a) pretty much everyone sees the power of a machine gun (like a Tommy gun, or full auto M-16 or AK-47) as pretty much ridiculously powerful and just beyond what is reasonable, and (b) the gun lobby is afraid to challenge it because they see a big risk that someone would rule that we can't have every Tom, Dick and Harry owning M-16s, and (c) there is no argument about 'where do you draw the line?' because the line is abundantly clear - if you hold the trigger down and it keeps on spitting bullets, it's illegal. But, you can have a gun that let's you pull the trigger and spit one bullet at a time.

....so.... it's as clear as mud.

[laklak]

As an aside, why are machine guns banned? I would have thought that if you were to fight a tyrannical government, machine guns would be bloody handy.

Blame Al Capone. From Wiki

The impetus for the National Firearms Act of 1934 was the gangland crime of the Prohibition era, such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, and the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.[1][2]:824[3][4] Like the current National Firearms Act (NFA), the 1934 Act required NFA firearms to be registered and taxed. The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time (equivalent to $3,659 in 2017). With a few exceptions, the tax amount is unchanged.[3][4]
Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated as strictly as machine guns; towards that end, cutting down a rifle or shotgun to circumvent the handgun restrictions by making a concealable weapon was taxed as strictly as a machine gun.[5]
Conventional pistols and revolvers were ultimately excluded from the Act before passage, but other concealable weapons were not.[5]

Prior to 1934 anyone could own a Chicago Typewriter.

[Brian Peacock]

You dirty rat. You killed my brother see. etc.

[Forty Two]

You dirty rat. You killed my brother see. etc.

That's a misquote of James Cagney. He never said it, and he wasn't playing Capone. He said, "come out and get it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat. Or, I'll give it to you through the door."

[laklak]

Top of the world, Ma!

[Brian Peacock]

[Forty Two]

Cagney did say that one, lol.

[JimC]

If the magazines of semi-automatic rifles were capped at a 10 round capacity, gun massacres would at least be a little harder. No possible hunting scenario requires more than 10 rounds, FFS...