Obama is thoroughly pissed off over the senate decision

[Gallstones]

Simplistic as always, Collector.

The sane ones amongst us are blaming piss-poor gun laws, not guns...

Sane people would blame criminals, wouldn't they?
There are already laws--for example, it is illegal to murder people--but laws get broken. Isn't that what the outrage is for, broken laws? How will drafting more law reduce crime? Has that not already been tried?

When something doesn't work, why do more of it, doesn't that equate to insanity?

[Gallstones]

Simplistic as always, Collector.

The sane ones amongst us are blaming piss-poor gun laws, not guns...

Riiiight...

So, what laws would you like to see?

The restrictions on gun ownership that are standard in the civilised world would be a good start...

But I'm not holding my breath - the the US, the inmates have taken control of the asylum...

It's our asylum.
Asylum = A place offering protection and safety; a shelter. The protection afforded by a sanctuary.
Your "inmates" happen to be the citizens of the USA, the great majority of whom are law abiding and peaceable and can be trusted to remain so without your version of what it means to be civilized.

[JimC]

Simplistic as always, Collector.

The sane ones amongst us are blaming piss-poor gun laws, not guns...

Sane people would blame criminals, wouldn't they?
There are already laws--for example, it is illegal to murder people--but laws get broken. Isn't that what the outrage is for, broken laws? How will drafting more law reduce crime?

The consequences of your comparatively lax gun laws, and overall gun culture, is that there are vastly more hand guns in circulation in the US than in comparable western countries. It is very easy for criminals to obtain guns in such an environment, and even young punk wannabees can get them easily.

In Australia, there are very few hand-guns around, and only the heavy hitters amongst the criminal community have them; and they mostly use them as a cool threat in a bank robbery, or to take out rival crims...

I will certainly admit this - suddenly tightening your gun laws about hand-guns would do very little good, at this stage, since the pool of guns available to criminals would remain for a long, long time. But surely you have to do something which will reduce the chance of lone, crazed gunmen using high capacity rifles to massacre civilians...

In some ways, I make these arguments more to make a case for countries like Oz retaining our restrictive laws; realistically, I think the US will simply have to put up with its high hand-gun murder rate, there simply may be no room to turn. (and BTW, the fact that the rate is highly variable geographically in the US doesn't impress me - the average is ridiculously high for a modern democracy...)

[Collector1337]

Simplistic as always, Collector.

The sane ones amongst us are blaming piss-poor gun laws, not guns...

Riiiight...

So, what laws would you like to see?

The restrictions on gun ownership that are standard in the civilised world would be a good start...

But I'm not holding my breath - the the US, the inmates have taken control of the asylum...

LOL! "Civilized world?" What snobbery. And a completely vague, non-answer to my question. Big shocker.

[Rum]

Simplistic as always, Collector.

The sane ones amongst us are blaming piss-poor gun laws, not guns...

Riiiight...

So, what laws would you like to see?

The restrictions on gun ownership that are standard in the civilised world would be a good start...

But I'm not holding my breath - the the US, the inmates have taken control of the asylum...

LOL! "Civilized world?" What snobbery. And a completely vague, non-answer to my question. Big shocker.

Following the thread of your argument - that people, not guns, kill people - it would therefore appear that America has more murderers per capita than other advanced countries. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss Jim's 'snobbery' if that is the case.

[Tyrannical]

Most gun crime in the US is committed by Blacks, and other Western countries don't have them in the numbers we do. We don't need gun control laws, we need black control laws like we had in the Jim Crow days.

[JimC]

Say it ain't so!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ap ... d-senators

Better here, Clinton... http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 22&t=43184

[Gallstones]

Most gun crime in the US is committed by Blacks, and other Western countries don't have them in the numbers we do. We don't need gun control laws, we need black control laws like we had in the Jim Crow days.

FFS, you need to be slapped upside the head.

[Gallstones]

An informal self selecting survey from April 19, 2013 Helena Independent Record


Can Obama possibly squeeze another 66% out of that statewide to not be a liar make his stats true?

[Rum]

Most gun crime in the US is committed by Blacks, and other Western countries don't have them in the numbers we do. We don't need gun control laws, we need black control laws like we had in the Jim Crow days.

[Seth]

and rightly so.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/8566011/Li ... n-violence

A bit of law crafted bipartisan and supported by 90% of the US populace and passed by a majority of the senate gets shot down by a few obstructionists in senate.

America is fucked up.

Um, clearly you don't understand the system. It doesn't matter if 99.9999999999% of the public "supports" some political act if that act violates the constitutional rights of so much as ONE SINGLE PERSON. In such a case, the rights of the one outweigh the desires of the many. It was set up that way quite deliberately.

Besides, polls are not votes, and Senators are elected to do what they did, which is represent their constituents through the representative political process. The public's approval or disapproval of their actions will be manifested at the next election, where I think you will discover that the polls were entirely wrong.

You see, even I agree that doing a background check on someone who wants to buy a gun is a good idea, but the devil's in the details of exactly HOW that is accomplished, which is why the proposal went down.

Americans are NOT going to tolerate knee-jerk legislation that has the obvious, though sub-rosa intent of facilitating further federal government interference with the RKBA by creating the next step in a system of universal gun registration.

That intent is transparently obvious in the legislation that was put down.

Anyone with a lick of sense or a modicum of intelligence knows that requiring every firearms transaction be done through a FFL with a NICS check is pointlessly futile as a bar to criminals because UNLESS there is a universal gun registry AND a universal gun owner registry, there is absolutely no way to enforce such a requirement.

FFL's only do NICS checks by federal mandate because they have to do so to keep their FFL's, which in and of themselves are infringements on the 2nd Amendment. And they do them because they have to keep the paperwork forever, and let the BATFE inspect those records whenever they want, which frequently results in prosecutorial abuse over minor paperwork errors in a very complex and burdensome regulatory system.

And then there's the lack of enforcement of the existing laws which provide for prison penalties for even filling out a Form 4473 falsely. Every person who fills one out and is rejected by NICS should be investigated immediately and, in theory, arrested and charged. But even the BATFE and FBI know that their records suck donkey dick and are filled with mistakes, so much so that some 40% or more of NICS denials are overturned on appeal because the person was misidentified as being disqualified in the federal records. And of the actual criminal acts where people knowingly try to buy a gun while falsifying the Form 4473, out of hundreds of thousands of such rejections, only about 70 have actually been prosecuted.

So, mostly what the NICS check does is delay things without really having any effect on preventing criminals from getting guns because, it has been discovered, criminals very infrequently buy their guns at gun stores...or at gun shows for that matter. They get them by theft and illegal purchase which is, interestingly, already illegal.

Therefore, a universal background check such as that proposed does nothing to stem the flow of guns to criminals, and it just inconveniences law-abiding citizens. But the actual intent is far more nefarious, because if Obama can get universal background checks passed, the NEXT step is to change the law so that the BATFE can KEEP the NICS records and link them to individuals in their newly-requested multi-source database system that will aggregate personal data from everywhere and create identifiable linkages between individuals. This would allow BATFE to track both guns and individuals, and it would create a defacto gun registry, which would (in the next stage) simply be legitimized by Congress because if the federal government gets it's slimy fingers on personal information, it WILL USE IT, even if it's explicitly prohibited from doing so by Congress, as proven by the two or three times the BATFE has been caught keeping NICS records, which is strictly AGAINST THE LAW. But not one swinging dick at BATFE has ever been arrested and thrown in prison for breaking that law.

So, we, the People are rightfully suspicious of any attempt to impose more background checks through FFL's.

However, there IS a way to increase the use of the NICS system and potentially prevent criminals from getting guns in some cases, which is to allow individual gun selling citizens to request a background check on a potential buyer themselves, anonymously, and without giving any information on the firearm itself.

All that's required is legislation that opens up the FBI NICS system to any citizen to call a number and give the operator the name, DOB and other ID information on the potential buyer and request a clearance. The seller need not give a name or any identifying information, and need not mention anything about the firearm, he just asks for a clearance on the ID information given. If the person is cleared, the sale takes place and all the feds know is that a background check was run on individual X. They don't know who the seller is or what gun was transferred. If the person fails the check, the seller is advised of this on the phone and it's up to the seller to abide by the EXISTING law which forbids him from selling a firearm (of any kind) to a person whom he has reasonable cause to believe is disqualified. And more than that, the potential buyer, who has VIOLATED THE LAW by even attempting to buy a gun, gets investigated by the feds and potentially arrested and charged.

Making the system voluntarily and trusting in the concern of law-abiding individuals who would bother to call for a check not to sell to a disqualified person would substantially improve the system without impinging further on our rights.

This is reasonable and rational because a seller who personally knows the buyer will have little need for a background check, and a responsible seller selling to a stranger will want to be sure they are qualified, while an irresponsible or criminal seller won't care and won't get a check...nor would such a person abide by a universal check law.

And THAT is the determinative factor. You can mandate universal background checks, but there is absolutely no way to enforce them between private individuals. None. Colorado requires a NICS check on all gun-show sales, but I guarantee you lots of transfers take place without the required NICS check "under the table" either because the seller knows the buyer personally or doesn't give a shit about the law. Those who DO the background check, which is most private sellers, just don't want to be set up by the CBI or local cops, who are constantly sending "undercover" cops to gun shows to try to entrap people into making illegal sales. But they can ONLY DO THIS because a gun show is in a confined place for a specified time.

They can't be in every back alley or kitchen table, which makes "mandatory" universal background checks nothing more than an obvious vehicle for gun and gun owner registration.

[Collector1337]

But surely you have to do something

No, we don't.

You don't do something just to do something. That's coming from an emotional, fear filled, irrational place. "OMG, We must do SOMETHING! Oh PLEASE, just think of the children!" Ridiculous.

You do something that's worth doing and not at the cost of people's Liberty.

[Seabass]

But surely you have to do something

No, we don't.

You don't do something just to do something. That's coming from an emotional, fear filled, irrational place. "OMG, We must do SOMETHING! Oh PLEASE, just think of the children!" Ridiculous.

You do something that's worth doing and not at the cost of people's Liberty.

I don't consider it irrational to think of the children.

[Seabass]

Most gun crime in the US is committed by Blacks, and other Western countries don't have them in the numbers we do. We don't need gun control laws, we need black control laws like we had in the Jim Crow days.

FFS, you need to be slapped upside the head.

He needs more than a slap. May I borrow one of your guns?

[Tyrannical]

Most gun crime in the US is committed by Blacks, and other Western countries don't have them in the numbers we do. We don't need gun control laws, we need black control laws like we had in the Jim Crow days.

FFS, you need to be slapped upside the head.

He needs more than a slap. May I borrow one of your guns?

Ignoring the problem or pretending it doesn't exist doesn't solve the problem. You could deny that Blacks are the major source of gun crime, but crime statistics prove otherwise. People are quick to blame poverty, but other impoverished groups don't have the same problem. Poor Black behavior such as crime, violence, dropping out of school, and child costs are self-inflicted and the primary reason for their poverty.