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10569. iiibbb - 12/24/2012 4:46:26 PM Steps the NRA could take to restore a modicum of legitimacy:
* Permit its rented legislators to approve the nomination of a BATF director (it's been six years...)
* Permit its rented legislators to fully fund Federal and State enforcement of existing legislation pertaining to firearms use, sales, transportation and regulation.
3) Insist that its rented legislators fund Public Health studies of gun violence, misuse and its victims.
I'm not an NRA member so I don't care about their credibility. I think these are issues related to finance reform in general.
4) Fund and encourage development of "smart gun" technologies.
Here is my problem with "smart" guns. I really dislike the whole "smart gun" movement. I actually think it is dangerous.
(1) The technology is unproven. How do you know it's going to be reliable? I'll adopt the technology when the police adopt the same technology.
(2) Guns are mechanical. You assume there would be no workaround.
(3) Smart guns over-ride the most important gun safety rules by tricking people into thinking guns are "safe". People will develop bad habits. You should not give anyone a reason to ever think that a gun is "safe" or "smart". It's like auto-correct on "smart" phones. What if you insisted that anyone using the internet adopted auto-correct to prevent typos... and people actually thought that would solve their typing problems?
No... "smart" guns are a very bad idea.
Smarter gun safes are a better idea. A subsidy for gun safes even... if you register your firearms you get a gun safe to match it. 10570. thoughtful - 12/24/2012 5:07:24 PM If you are looking at preventing another situation like in Newtown, I'm not sure what these steps would've done. The shooter was well trained and practiced. The guns he used were semi-auto but not assault as CT has an assault weapons ban in place. The guns were purchased well in advance. If there was a smart chip in them, then presumably the mother would've allowed his "signature" to be approved too as they went shooting together.
The limit on clip size is much like Bloomberg's limit on soda size...you just buy 2 instead.
Controlled access was in place...the shooter shot his way through a glass panel in the door. And you don't want to so harden access to a building that the good guys can't get in....the shooter shot himself when he heard the police coming from outside and that's when the killing stopped.
The only thing I can see that's preventative is in regards to family and mental health services....there were clearly issues in this family that went unaddressed. The fact that mental health services seem to be available if you are 18 or under or 65 and over but with a huge gap in between, is one of the biggest gaps I see in policy and needs to be addressed. 10571. Wombat - 12/24/2012 10:59:57 PM iiibbb,
Thanks for the sane input.
The overall thrust of my suggestions is to make firearms and their owners more like cars and drivers.
So...if a gun is stolen and you report it to the police and the insurance company you wouldn't be responsible for it after it's stolen. Rates might go up, though.
Portability: since the licensing and registration databases are national, a gunowner could carry and use firearms in other states. They would have to be aware of any additional restrictions individual states may have.
Background checks: Each purchase. What if a prospective buyer had an encounter with the police since the last purchase?
Price gouging and people hurting themselves trying to refill cartridges doesn't concern me. The laws of economics can deal with the former, and people have the right to do stupid things to themselves.
I take your points on smart guns. However, I would like to see more research done on them. Who knows, perhaps some day the police will adopt them.
My suggestions do not directly address Newtown. However, they add some hoops to jump through, and would force sellers and owners to act responsibly or face consequences. For the majority of gun owners, none of these suggestions should be problematic (other than financially--freedom has a price, after all). To quote our conservative friends, "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about!" 10572. judithathome - 12/25/2012 12:24:05 AM I have some problems with a national databank of crazy people...do we really want to trust that the govenment/states will get this so called "list" right? The same government/state that can't run an election every four years correctly...with dead people still on voting lists and people purged from lists because their names sound "ethnic"...will be able to manage lists of people with mental difficulties?
We really want to trust that perfectly sane people won't end up on that list...with all the repercussions that entails?...and that actual nutjobs will slip through the cracks?
Seems weird to me...but not really...that a man who runs a club and whose millions are paid each year from "members of that club" doesn't want to blame the reason for i.e. guns that club at all but instead, wants to deflect blame onto those who are "less than" sane. 10573. arkymalarky - 12/25/2012 12:27:47 AM It all sounds reasonable as well as 3i's responses. Would that all discussions on the subject could be that productive. Efficiently reduce risk (no one argues changes would eliminate it) and increase responsibility--not "solve" the problem, any more than you solve drunk driving, careless wrecks, or murder with laws and regulations. The NRA's intransigence is only going to further marginalize them and the GOP with them. Even conservative Democrats and most moderate Republicans are getting off the bus here. That and the fiscal cliff are really taking a toll on conservatives. 10574. iiibbb - 12/26/2012 11:30:04 PM This is why it is hard to take "Common Sense Gun Laws" seriosuly
People play by the rules. Register their guns.... only to have their rights trampled on by a newspaper trying to prove what?
People demand registration... demand training... demand whatever else... and those who comply are vilified, while the ones who ignore the law go on their merry way.
Concealed carry permit holders should be held up as champions of what gun control advocates say they want... but then they go off and turn these law-abiding people into targets.
sheesh. 10575. arkymalarky - 12/26/2012 11:40:02 PM Stan and I have argued about the issue of how far our right to privacy goes in the Internet age. I don't think records of that type should be public information. As much as I enjoyed seeing Anonymous hack the Westboro nutjobs, I think we all have a right to a certain amount of security wrt our information being disseminated online. He thinks it's public information and people shouldn't expect it not to be. 10576. iiibbb - 12/26/2012 11:49:08 PM I wonder how many women on that list were trying to keep their addresses secret from abusive partners...
There is a difference between it being public information, and making it too easy. I can find out all kinds of personal information about people... but I have to go to a county courthouse to get it.
Another side effect of this list is that it a) tells criminals where they can find guns, and b) where people might not have guns.
But mostly it just demonstrates why people are resistant to giving in to "common sense" gun laws. Why would I willingly subject myself to this kind of thing? 10577. alistairconnor - 12/27/2012 12:44:13 PM So, that was already publicly-availailable information (the paper did nothing illegal). So any bad guys who wanted to access the information could already do so.
The paper is being accused, it seems, of bad taste.
So, the question is : transparency or not? Either the register should be confidential, or there's nothing wrong with publishing it. Any other position is self-defeating. 10578. iiibbb - 12/27/2012 3:39:54 PM There's two kinds of transparent. If you have to look up each record individually, that's one thing. If you have a database that can batch lookup and browse, that's another.
I suppose I could, as a matter of public record collect names and addresses of rape victims. Should county workers just hand me that data without cause?
But you're right, it is about taste and New York gun owners who have a registry.
Why should I be in favor of a national registry if this is how it's going to be used. Fuck that. 10579. arkymalarky - 12/27/2012 6:30:54 PM No national registry of voluntary legal behavior should be used like that IMHO. 10580. Wombat - 12/27/2012 7:00:31 PM Agreed. It being a centralized Federal registry should ease security. 10581. robertjayb - 12/28/2012 2:58:22 AM Texas Tower revisited...
AUSTIN — The Austin police officer who helped stop Charles Whitman's 1966 sniper rampage from atop the University of Texas tower has died.
Houston McCoy fired two blasts from his shotgun to bring down Whitman, who killed 16 people during nearly two hours of terror on the UT campus. Wayne Vincent, president of the Austin Police Association, said McCoy died Thursday in the rural West Texas town of Menard.
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An interesting (then and now) sidebar to the story told of motorists along Guadalupe Street (UT's main drag) who pulled deer rifles from their vehicles and either joined in the suppressing fire or gave the guns to cops.
10582. robertjayb - 12/28/2012 5:04:11 AM This lengthy Wikipedia account of the sniper Charles_Whitman and other similar incidents is an eerie but interesting and informative read in this time so soon after Sandy Hook.
Just giving it a quick skim I briefly thought I detected some commonality among the shooters and the Oklahoma City bomber. But maybe I'm nutty too. I think it is a good piece and I will go over it again. 10583. robertjayb - 12/28/2012 5:31:24 AM Sorry. Can't make a working link. If you are interested try Charles Whitman on Wikipedia. 10584. iiibbb - 12/28/2012 5:59:29 AM L.A. Morons pay $100 for useless tubes in buyback program
What hacks. They will score tons of points with the gun-control nutjubs... except these "rocket launchers" are single-use meant-to-be-discarded non-reloadable tubes with buttons on them. 10585. robertjayb - 12/28/2012 6:52:07 AM 
General Halftrack and I have the same condition.
10586. arkymalarky - 12/31/2012 3:24:21 AM Hillary Clinton is in the hospital with a blood clot. 10587. Wombat - 12/31/2012 3:53:04 AM She'll do anything to avoid testifying about Benghazi, right Concerned? 10588. judithathome - 12/31/2012 6:26:47 PM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was sent to the hospital on Sunday with a blood clot stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier this month and was being assessed by doctors, a State Department spokesman said.
"In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago," spokesman Philippe Reines said in a statement.
"She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours," Reines said, adding that doctors would continue to assess her condition.
This is a serious condition; my mother died of a blood clot going to her lung.
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