I buy through a licensed dealer. There is a back ground check each time I purchase a gun. The "gun show loop hole" exists to allow personal sales by individuals to friends and family. The loop hole is abused by unlicensed dealers who show up at gun shows selling dozens or hundreds of guns. Let the ATF enforce the law against the unlicensed professional dealers. But the ATF is underfunded.

My inclination is to have every gun sold be registered and require a background check, and this goes for private transfers, too. Then, when a crime occurs, make the owner have some degree of culpability and suffer the consequences. It may mean added measures to keep the gun under control at all times to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. But shouldn't they be doing this anyway?

7 round capacity? I don't think you understand how magazines work in A LOT of the double-stackers we use. 7 rounds is fine if you're using a freakin' single-stack or a 1911, nothing wrong with either, but you're talking a thin or small gun. You'd literally leave millions of gun owners without the ability to buy new magazines for their guns for months and months, if not forever. We're talking an entire overhaul of how magazines are manufactured. Then you open yourself up to FTEs, FTFs, and possibly worse.

10-15 round capacity is FINE. Glocks and Berettas were built just for that. As an owner of both, and yes, as an owner of a highly modified Beretta 92FS with 20 round FLUSH mags (a favorite for soldiers in the service behind, anti-friction magazines to prevent gunkification and sand). I can't see any situation where I would even want to be in a firefight where I fire more than 5 rounds, which is why my prime carry is a 1 7/8 snub nose with two extra 5 round mags.

And not that this has any bearing on what I just said, let it be known that I'm a socialist-liberal-democrat-atheist-bisexual so I'm easily one of the most hated demographics and one that is stereotyped as being anti-gun, many of the people I know who fall under some level of that political alignment are pro-gun too. Just...we're in agreement that we don't need fully automatic assault rifles. I had a WASR-10 AK47, not exactly the creme of the crop, but this gun was reliable as hell, never misfired, could be ran over and stomped on in mud and still shoot straight, barring the barrel wasn't damaged, harder to do than you'd think, btw. I could easily get a dozen people locked in a room or cornered and with minimal marksmanship take them all out before they got a chance due to 30+ round magazines. I think AR-15s and AK-47s need to be highly regulated, even semi-autos, which is what I had, plenty of damage can be done with those and no sane person hunts with an AK-47. You get a .308 bolt-action rifle and do it, one of dozens of choices better than an assault rifle.

An assault rifle is meant for ASSAULT, plain and simple. We don't need them to have fun target shooting and IF that is all you want it for, then why not just rent them at a range? You certainly don't need more than a shotgun and pistol for home defense, and if you had a fully automatic weapon you're more likely to shoot up half the people in your house taking out your soon-to-be-perforated intruder. So unless you plan on taking on SWAT teams and the military with your AR-15, you have no real argument, and of course, that argument is bat@!$%# in itself.

Hobo - I so can't support a magazine with more than 7 rounds, sorry. We've had too many shootings with people that had more than 7 rounds and at some point we've got to stop this insanity. I get owning a gun for home defense & hunting, why more than 7 rounds are needed is still an anathema to me - frankly if you need to fire more than 7 rounds - then you definitely need to be on the gun range cause you don't have skills....

Zora, do you know the "hit rate" for police officers in gun fights? It's somewhere between 25 and 40 percent. And that's their JOB. Adrenaline spikes reduce accuracy. The average gun owner who practices when he can will probably do significantly worse than that...so a sub 25% hit rate. At 7 rounds, that's maybe 1 hit, or 2 at the most.

That's all you need!!!...you say, anyway.

1. What if they don't go down with that 1 hit? 1 hit stops are not as common as you think. Large, angry, potentially high men can take a lot to put them down. These are undisputed facts. Sometimes, you have to put more than 1, or 2, or even 3 rounds into someone to STOP them.

2. What if there's more than one attacker? Gang violence is rising in this country. There is no rule that you can only be attacked by one person at a time. Bad guys don't play fair.

In both the above situations, the law abiding citizen is raped/killed/mugged because YOU think they shouldn't have more than 7 rounds. Why are you willing to make that call for them? Seems pretty high handed.

Finally, I leave you with this---speed reloading even a 7 shot magazine, or EVEN A REVOLVER can be accomplished within a couple of seconds, if someone is truly skilled. And the small amount of time it takes to do such a speed reload is far more precious when you're being actively attacked by thugs than it would be when you're casually killing a room full of milling children. The mass shooters can certainly take the 0.5 to 2 seconds it might take to reload....the 80 year old grandma facing two meth addicts running down the hallway might not...so reducing magazine capacity will do very little to inconvenience mass shooters, while potentially killing law abiding systems who need more rounds.

Hobo, why stop there? A pump action shotgun filled with birdshot, backed up by a couple of revolvers, and I could slaughter a room full of people too, with little trouble. Or you could just build a bomb out of common household supplies if you wanted to kill 30 people, or 100. Or drop poison in the water supply.

Forget pump action, the kid in columbine stalked the halls with a break open double barrel shotgun, and reloaded it dozens of times. Why didn't the 2 round capacity stop him? Because children aren't going to rush an active shooter. There was no one in the gun free zone that could have stopped him, so he had all the time in the world to reload, and reload, and reload, reload reload, reload.

The 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting. People don't need an Ar-15 for hunting. They potentially need it for defense.

I think it will take a major campaign to educate the public. I'm amazed at the people who think the 2nd Amendment gives them the right to carry firearms any damn place they please, when in fact it does not. (see SCOTUS 2008 decision in District of Columbia v Heller. And BTW, I live in Arizona which has basically no gun regulation at all.)

I'd settle for a real ban on assault weapons and extended capacity magazines, with 100% background checks. Feinstein's proposed legislation, unless I'm mistaken, allows existing items to be grandfathered, which may help in the long run, but does nothing for the immediate future.

Why do you want these changes, Haddie? Why focus on banning these weapons, instead of say...Baseball bats, which kill far more people every year in the U.S. than assault weapons. Obviously, you need them for the game of baseball..but should people really be allowed to have these kinds of killing clubs readily at hand away from the baseball diamond? Why do you want the children to die? Until we address baseball bat control, there's no point in even fooling with the relative handful of deaths each year which occur as the result of extended magazines or "assault weapons." I'm sick and tired of pro-bat fanatics ignoring this deadly issue in favor of chasing after a minor issue like assault weapons.

Certain Republicans (and other gun owners) have a knee-jerk opposition to"gun control" -- but many are not opposed to "common sense gun safety." Framing matters. Let's use it.

If those of us who want such measures appeal to the rational, responsible gun owners, we need to keep the common sense language in the forefront. And it is common sense to have nationwide registration of guns with a national database. The common sense problem now is that criminals get their hands on guns illegally due to inconsistent gun sales requirements. Beef those up nationally, and criminals will find it much much harder to get the guns that some gun-owners are so frightened of.

Let's calm the fears of those scared and angry gun owners. We are not after your home gun which you want in case someone bad bursts into your home, nor do we think you shouldn't be able to hunt or shoot targets if you enjoy that. The goal is to simply make sure that the guns are only in the hands of people who are willing to be responsible for them -- and many legal gun owners are, in fact, careful and responsible. I should think this is something we all would prefer.

My fear is that you are right. Big plans, big talk, big push, big failure. Not the way to kick off second term.

Donni,

How would these restrictions have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre? While I agree, that criminals should not have guns...how does a national registration prevent that? A fairly significant portion of all guns in criminal hands were stolen, or smuggled into the country, or even manufactured illegally. There are cartel run gun factories in Mexico, and they're being imported by the wagonload. I'm wholeheartedly for keeping guns only in the hands of those willing to use them responsibly, but I truly think the genie is out of the bag.

More stringent background checks, and passing a safety knowledge test? YES! National database? Eh...it makes me worry about future confiscation. Historically, registration leads to confiscation. What happens when there's another heartgripping mass shooting, after the national registration takes place? Well, I imagine that the dialogue could very well be along the lines of "Registration clearly isn't enough...we just have to confiscate the guns, period....because these darned criminals keep ignoring the laws, and stealing the guns, or just snapping and going off the deep end and using their registered weapons to kill." Someone about to commit a mass shooting will not care that they will be able to trace the gun to him. He's going out in a blaze of glory.

I agree with your assessment in general. I, as a gun owner and Democratic voter, fully support the goal to beef up the laws in a way that makes the "gun show loophole" more difficult. Perhaps a rational limit on the number of gun sales a single individual can make in a year without being a licensed dealer. This number would undoubtedly be larger than many gun-control advocates would like, but still could be low enough to make it impossible to 'make a living' that way. We already require licensed dealers to perform criminal background checks.

Your biggest problem with this common sense agenda is that you appear to be a minority amongst the vocal gun control advocates. I see too many saying things like "The police and military have guns. You don't need 'em." That's the sort of talk that would drive me away from voting for a given Democratic candidate. Can't imagine anything that would make me vote Repub, but that would certainly cost the Dems a vote.

People who use and understand guns are also frustrated by the focus on appearance. This gun looks scary, so it must be bad; that gun looks like the one I saw in a western, so it must be ok. When they're *identically functional weapons*. Not similar, not almost, but often *exactly* identical function. I also, for instance, show gun control advocates pictures of, say, a Remington 700 tactical rifle - a bolt action rifle made for precision shooting - and laugh when they say "OMG ASSAULT RIFLE!" - demonstrating a *complete* lack of understanding of the thing they want to become involved in. Is it any wonder that gun users would be concerned?

Mr. White, I think we're largely in agreement..The real problem is ignorance. Ignorance is the biggest factor in gun control. Ignorance of literally everything---how they work, which are more dangerous, gun control statistics, history, the dynamics of mass shootings.

The vast, vast majority of gun control advocates don't realize that a pump shotgun is much more dangerous as a mass slaughter weapon inside of a school than an "assault" rifle is. A lever action cowboy gun like John Wayne used is MUCH more dangerous for use in a mass shooting than the Remington 700 rifle you referenced, but since it looks so much more menacing....

And literally no gun control advocate seems to understand the concept of speed reloading.

Matt: You are fooling nobody here. Your strawmen are so thick I understand the National Alfalfa Association is interested in interviewing you...

@Donni - A national database is never, ever going to happen now. The Journal News made sure of that. It is an absolute violation of your privacy to have the government publish information that details the private chattels that are within your privately owned home for all to see. It serves no legitimate purpose and is meant only to attempt to ostracize legal gun owners, not to mention (as many on the left openly admit) it is simply the first step towards confiscation.

What makes the whole "assault weapons" debate ridiculous to me is that the only reason the focus is on assault weapons is because they look scary. I understand the "assault weapons" were used in Aurora and Newtown, but banning the sale of "assault weapons" in the future will most likely 1) have absolutely no noticeable effect on gun crime (they are already a very, very small fraction of the weapons used in crimes, 2) not prevent an "assault weapon" from being used in a mass shooting after enactment because there are already millions and millions of these rifles already in circulation. If a criminal wants a weapon, he will get it.

First off, no, there are not more homicides with baseball bats than guns. http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/baseballbats.asp

Second, for those saying "why ban X when Y does even more damage"—OK, let's ban Y as well then. Why do you need a speed re-loader?! Are you paying per second for your target practice? Do you really think that the extra time reloading is why you will miss getting that buck?

How does registration help? It tells us whose guns were being used in an assault. It gives us another line of culpability. If all your guns are tied to you, presumably you'll be better about keeping track of them and/or reporting a loss.

Banning certain weapons will make it harder for the criminals to get them. Note that most of these mass shootings happen with legally acquired weapons. If they were not legal, then you have to break even more laws just to get your arms with the higher chances of being stopped before you go on that shooting spree.

First off, what is my strawman? I would love to address any potential issues with my argument.

Secondly, regarding baseball bat deaths? I think what has become lost is that the original qoute was bout RIFLE deaths. Far, far more people are killed each year with handguns than with rifles. I think I'm guilty of mixing facts. I think the number of deaths are, in order, 1. Handguns 2. Blunt objects and Knives 3. Rifles. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8

However, much of the furor over gun control is based on going after "assault rifles". Not handguns. And I think a further look into the numbers, and common sense, would show that the vast majority of handgun deaths occurred with the use of less than 10 rounds of ammunition. So the magazine ban, and the assault rifle bans that have been proposed as the big boy hammer that will really take a bite out of senseless gun violence will do almost nothing, statistically.

Regarding the banning of "x" and "y"? Okay then. So you would support the banning of alcohol, tobbaco, hammers, bats, etc? I don't think the rest of the country would go along with you. I doubt you could even get 10 percent.

Why do you need a speed reloader? So you can shoot faster--1. for fun. and 2. in a self defense situation, because people in stress situations are notoriously bad shots, even trained police officers. And a revolver holds relative few rounds, so speed reloaders were born. Semi-automatic pistols don't have "speed reloaders" as pieces of equipment, they are just inherently designed to be reloaded very, very quickly, largely for personal defense. Not about hunting, or target practice. It's about defense.

Registration---Believe it or not, people generally already put a lot of value and concern into keeping their HIGHLY VALUABLE weapons secure. 1. No one wants thousands of dollars worth of their favorite gun stolen. and 2. No one wants to enable a tragedy. Most people already take strong precautions towards having their guns stolen...and they still get stolen. Criminals are clever.

However, if you'd be down with a national registration for money, as well, so that people can be punished if money stolen from their bank accounts or wallets, or their credit card number, is ever used to fund criminal activities, then I'd be willing to go along with a national registration on guns(people are already doing all they can, because no one wants to be ripped off)...or I probably wouldn't, but you're essentially trying to punish people because they had the misfortune of being ripped off, and doing it in a way that would enable easy confiscation if the political climate changed in the future. No sir. Not interested.

Now, I am in favor of ensuring that stolen or lost guns ARE reported quickly. If you have guns stolen, and don't report it, then you should be liable when they turn up---not for what occurred, but some statutory penalty that's the same regardless of what crime the guns were used in. That would strongly encourage people to report gun losses, while not overly punishing them for being robbed, NOR creating a national database for future confiscation or public targeting as the newspaper recently shamefully engaged in. That's a good, common sense gun law that would advance the issue.

Banning certain weapons might make it harder for criminals to get them, but they'll be much more likely to have these weapons than the average law abiding citizen....the black market is rife with the weapons, they are stolen from the police and military, and they are even being manufactured and imported illegally. Criminals will still be able to get their hands on them....and within a year or two, 3-d printing will have advanced to the point that fully functional and durable weapons can be printed from something that costs less than an economy car. Gun control is OVER for criminals, at that point.

Lebowsky Dude:

So anyone that has a different opinion as you, is wrong? And you stoop as low as calling people names? You are no different than those ignorant conservative republicans that stick their heads in the sand. You and them are both incapable to even listen to the other side with an open mind.

Amber...I just wish he would make a substantive point I can address. I'm not sure what strawmen he is referring to.

Gun control advocates don't want to have a discussion about guns, in my experience. They want you to feel ashamed that you would support guns, and begin with the a priori assumption that gun control is right, and that guns are bad. And of course, as you point out, there are people on the other side who just scream "it's my constitutional right!" without discussing why that is, or is not, important...so both sides just end up yelling at each other, both convinced they're completely right, and the other side is completely wrong.

Amber: The fella has listed strawman after strawman, from baseball bats to birdshot. I am all ears for a rational and factual discussion about gun control, but every attempt gets hijacked.

Matt: I am a gun owner, so once again, you are simply exercising your fingers with wild assumptions and canards. Most gun owners support reasonable restrictions like magazine size and assault rifle bans.

Ignorance---I talked about this earlier. The problem with many gun control advocates is that they are ignorant(and I'm using this in a factual way, not intending insult--they are not stupid, merely ignorant of how guns work).

The bans being proposed do little to limit a weapons deadliness. Any handgun with a detachable magazine(which I'm GUESSING constitute more than half of the handguns typically used and carried by american gun owners...there are literally tens of millions of these out there in the hands of law abiding citizens) can be reloaded with a fresh magazine in maybe half a second. So limiting the detachable magazines to a 10 round capacity is completely useless as a way of preventing a mass shooting. COMPLETELY USELESS. You can blaze through 60 rounds of ammunition in 10 round magazines in a nearly identical amount of time as you can with 3 20 round magazines, particularly if you're actually trying to aim and shoot, and not just spraying as fast as you can. Speed reloading trays for revolvers work very nearly as well(and are SO simplistic that you can build one at home, or easily 3-d print one, so banning them will have no practical effect on the criminal's ability to require a revolver speed reloader)

Their proposals, even if I were to agree with them that it would be a good thing to enact draconian gun control, simply aren't going to work. You would need to ban any handgun that doesn't have a fixed magazine, and the loading mechanism needs to be made sufficiently laborious and complicated that it would take a couple of minutes, or AT LEAST 20-30 seconds to reload. That might give someone enough time to rush an active shooter.

Could that be done? Probably. I'm sure you could still jury rig the handgun to be loaded more effectively, but it would take some gunsmithing know how that would seriously impair the likelihood that it could be done. However, there are MANY problems with this as an actual solution for gun violence and mass shootings---(and I'm looking at problems from the perspective that gun control is the solution, ignoring any potential social problems inherent with making people helpless and disarmed)

1. There are tens of millions of weapons already in circulation and essentially "off the books"---these can and will still be used in the commission of crimes. It might make it slightly harder to get them, but it's not going to be the most difficult thing in the world either.

2. Firearms are being illegally imported en masse into the country even as we speak. Mexican cartels have their own gun factories.

3. We are literally on the doorstep of being able to (relatively) affordably 3-d print just about any assault weapon you want(or a full auto machine gun, etc). In just a couple years, the techonology will literally be in household use. There will be nothing to stop illicit arms manufacturing across the country, with any criminal who can cough up a couple thousand dollars.

4. Such legisation would make a HUGE portion of the american citizenry turn in their expensive and cherished self defense pistols. Pistols that are not popularly seen as "assault weapons." It would be hugely expensive to buy them back(and just confiscating them would be an unconstitutional "taking", and thus illegal), something on the order of at least 25-50 Billion dollars to buy all semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines or easily loaded fixed magazines(like those in the M1 Garand--the WW2 era U.S.A. rifle, or the SKS).

It would be hugely unpopular politically. Many of the people who are actually calling for an "assault weapons" ban would be aghast to discover that their trust old 1911 sidearm they inherited from their father is in fact going to be confiscated, and would immediately flip into a frothing rage at the violation of "their rights."

I don't think the political willpower is even close to being there in order to enforce weapons bans that would ACTUALLY have a snowball's chance in hell of preventing mass shootings.

And that is it, in a nutshell. Even assuming gun control were a good thing, it's actually impossible to enact effectively.

Okay Lebowsky,

1. how many bullets should a gun be allowed to hold? Why?

2. What rifles should be banned(give me a few examples)? Why?

Let's be civil and courteous. I want to explore these "strawmen" you're talking about.

Matt: Ten rounds max for any magazine on any gun, and ban the sale of military style assault rifles like the AR15. That would be a nice start, but of course it will not be an end-all. Now I will await stories about baseball bats, knives, birdshot, speed reloading, freedom, alcohol, tobacco, criminals, bank accounts, money, and blunt objects...

1. WHy is 10 rounds enough, when I can speed reload in 0.5 seconds? Why is 10 rounds enough, when that could still be 11 dead children, even if I only bring one gun). As part of this answer, could you address why speed reloading is a red herring/strawman? I see it as a very real problem that largely defeats what the 10 round magazine capacity is hoping to accomplish.

2. What makes a military style assault weapon, such as an ar 15, more deadly than a regular, semi-automatic rifle. Also, what is an assault weapon in your mind?

3. Are you for a ban on pump action or semi automatic shotguns? I'm sure you'd agree that a shotgun slug loaded with buckshot or heavier birdshot would be beyond devastating in a classroom. 9 slugs from a shotgun would turn an entire class of 7 year olds into bird food, probably more effectively than an Ar-15.

Thank you for your courteous answer, btw.

Matt: This is about way more than schools, so your classroom scenarios are just more strawman building. Nobody is proposing this because of infallibility, we are simply asking for resonable restrictions. Magazine size is a good example of a reasonable restriction, civillians don't need drums or 30 round mags with any legit gun use. Too many nutjobs already have these, so I say lets stop making them and flooding the market with them. Same with assault rifles using the 223 round, these are not hunting rifles unless you are hunting humans. This will have to stop eventually, many more guns are sold than humans born.

I would think the pump action or semi-automotic shotgun would be MASSIVELY destructive at any realistic engagement ranges---anything indoors, certainly, and anything within 50 yards outside. Most realistic scenario's would occur in those ranges, so it's not a strawman. Furthermore, the vast majority gun control inertia is predicated on stopping "these tragedies."....Which seem to occur indoors, in tight spaces---A movie theater, schools(several), a shopping mall. Shotguns are extremely deadly in all these situations that we're trying to avoid, so I fail to see any red herring aspect here. You need to delineate more clearly what you see as the problem with my argument, please. Don't you want people to be safe in places like schools, or malls, or shopping centers? If you're using that as the rationale to restrict "assault weapons" then you realisticaly, and honestly, have to restrict shotguns as well, or you're just whistling in the graveyard. One of the largest shootings in Britian occurred with the use of a shotgun, after they restricted other weapons

What exactly are you picturing as the main scenario's where guns are going to be used to create slaughter, because in every mass shooting situation I can think of(outside the guy in the belltower at Texas), a shotgun would have been at least as effective as the assault rifles that were used...so why are you ignoring them as a threat to public safety, while going after an Ar-15?

Also, please address speed reloading does not largely circumvent the attempt to suppress volume of fire through magazine size restrictions. You did not explain how either 10 rounds is enough of a restriction(that's still a lot of dead people, potentially, even with just the 1 magazine). What are your criteria for evaluating what to ban, and why?

Despite the fact that "many nutjobs" have these drums and 30 round mags, why are they so rarely used in mass slaughter? My heart goes out to the victims of Aurora, and Sandy Hook....but given the millions and millions of high capacity magazines and "assault weapons" out there, it seems strange that there are so few shootings involving assault weapons, relatively speaking. Handguns seem like the much, much bigger issue. Handguns of any type, or capacity.

You also have not answered my question--what differentiates an assault weapon from a semi-automatic hunting rifle. Or do you consider all semi-automatic hunting rifles to be assault weapons?

The .223 round---Is actually not particularly powerful, as rifle rounds go--it's towards the bottom of the heap--well above a 22LR, but nowhere close to something more along the lines of a main battle rifle, like they used in WW2(the 30-06 was the main round we used in that war). It's generally used as a varmint round--foxes/coyotes/maybe wolves. States are sort of split on whether it's powerful enough to take deer. I know that our military uses this round(actually, the military version is called 5.56, but it's close enough to be not worth talking about!), but they are strongly considered moving to a more powerful round because there have been more than a few issues with the round lacking the power to take down people. People like it because it's very accurate, particularly at long ranges, and also doesn't have much kick, so it's pleasant to shoot.

There are literally dozens of commonly used calibers(that people don't seem to be upset about) that would be more effective against unarmored people than the .223/5.56 round. Such as .308/.30-06/.300 blackout/6.5 Grendel/6.8 Special/.270/50 Beowulf/45-70 govment....all of which are commonly used(and ideally suited for) hunting as well. Generally anything that would take a deer is ideal for use against people. Anything that wouldn't is so/so against people, and thus, would not be suitable as a military cartride. .223 is borderline.

Of course, people would just switch to a different cartridge that would be at least as effective(and probably more so), so I'm not sure what banning the cartridge would do? There's a lot of misinformation out there about .223. Don't fall victim to it.

Absolutely no one who is in favor of restricting certain types of guns to prevent mass shootings should be in favor of allowing shotgun ownership to continue. Period. End of story. They are at least as dangerous, if not more so, than any commonly available "assault weapon" on the market.

There is way around this. If you're going after the guns to stop mass shootings(or just going after "especially dangerous" guns period) you have to get the Shotguns....and probably the lever action rifles, as well. And any semi-auto with a detachable magazine. And probably any revolver, because they can be speed reloaded. And anything like the M1 Garand and the SKS which do not have detachable magazines, but can be loaded very quickly and efficiently, and have powerful rounds---much more powerful than the the .223 used in the Ar-15. These bullets can go through 4-5 people stacked together, killing them all in a single shot.

I'm unsure on whether bolt action rifles would need to be restricted as well---but you could make a very compelling case---they are capable of precision shots from more than a half mile away, and they fire incredibly powerful bullets, generally. You could shoot down helicopters or small plans. You can blow up tanks of propane or gas(again, easily) from so far away people cant' even see you. These are precision sniper rifles, instruments of death.

If you want to get to the point where people can't kill others from anonymity half a mile away(like the D/C sniper), nor kill massive amounts of unarmed people in short to medium ranges, you NEED to get all semiauto rifles, shotguns(pump or semiauto), any semiauto pistol with a detachable magazine, any revovler that can be speed reloaded(anything where the cylinder pops away, allowing you to reload all 6-8 rounds simultaneously, instead of feeding in one at a time), all lever action guns(can fire nearly as fast as any of these "assault rifles" and generally fire powerful rounds), and potentially all bolt action rifles as well.

Single or double barrel shotguns? Those might be okay. It's important to note that one of the Columbine killers stalked the halls with an old double barreled shotgun, which he was able to load dozens of times, because there was no one armed there to stop him. So even single and double shot shotguns are incredibly deadly in an enclosed setting where no one can really fight back, and the police can't get there almost immediately. So...they might need to go as well...if you truly are trying to stop these senseless deaths, of course.

And then...after banning ALL of that. Will people not make bombs instead? Or shop in the black market? Or 3-d print an assault rifle? It will be harder, yes...but not even close undoable. It will happen...probably at a similar clip to how it happens now. Most of these mass shooters are pretty smart folks. Disturbed, but cunning.

All of these facts you would "strawmen", when they are simply an HONEST look at what guns actually do, and what people are likely to do if you restrict their access to guns. Facts and consequences are NOT strawmen. Nothing here is untrue. Nothing is unrealistic, or fanciful. I can prove that guns can be reloaded very quickly, I can prove that shotguns can be used to devastating effect in almost any realistic situation where we are trying to avoid gun violence. I can prove that bolt action hunting rifles can kill from a mile away, and take out infrastructure, shoot down helicopters, and cause explosions...

And I dont' think anyone would argue with me that people who want to kill others will find a way, and that there are many effective ways to kill large numbers of people, even without guns(something that won't realistically happen, even with a total ban--they will still be out there).

Matt: shotguns have massive recoil, assault rifles with 223 or 22 long rifle have virtually no recoil. Plus assault rifles have lore, they are glamourized and idolized. Trying to point out that shotguns are just as dangerous as assault rifles to humans is not backed up by facts, and it is a terribly unpersuasive argument against reasonable gun control proposals IMHO. I will say that I do appreciate your willingness to have this discussion without name calling and histrionics, I salute you for your listening to what I have to say.

Shotguns do have signficant recoil---but certainly not something that would stop someone from using it to destroy a crowd of people. Here's a video a rather frail looking teenage girl shooting a 12 gauge--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6CBKUM9gk8

She's able to easily control and quickly fire the gun. In no way does the shotguns recoil prevent her from using it in a very effective way. And this is a frail woman, not an averaged size young man, Not really sure what recoil has to do with anything in the context of preventing mass shootings?

Shotguns are just as dangerous to humans as assault rifles is NOT backed up by facts? Do you have facts that show Assault rifles are more dangerous than Shotguns to humans? Please cite them. Here is an FBI report of homicide statistics, which clearly show that more people have been killed with shotguns over the last several years, than even the larger category of "rifles" of which Assault rifles are just a smaller sub-category---so signficantly more people are killed every year with a shotgun, it fires more powerful, wider spreading ammunition, and is just as accurate at close ranges(for all intents and purposes as would regard its efficacy in committing violence)

I'm not arguing against reasonable gun control, I'm arguing that anyone wanting reasonable gun control HAS to include shotguns, or it's just pathetic and useless. I'm assuming "reasonable" means gun control that might prevent more mass shootings, or make them MUCH more difficult. There is no debate that shotguns are incredibly deadly and powerful close and midrange combat weapons. None. Our troops have been using shotguns for decades, in combat.

To even attempt to imply that they're less dangerous than an Ar-15 in situations like Aurora or Columbine or Sandy Hook, or the Mall shooting or a shooting inside any building, like VT, is just not correct.

I'm being as polite as I can, but IT SEEMS( I can't say for sure) that you're attempting to deceive people on this blog who don't know any better. Shotguns(and quite frankly, almost any firearm) need to be on the chopping block if you're even going to attempt to keep another Sandy Hook from happening. Period.

But you don't want to own that, for some reason. Almost no gun control advocate does, because they know they can't convince the public at large to go along with it. They'd start to look extreme, not "reasonable." If you want to make it so that people can't have legal access to weapons that are easily utilized to kill LOTS of other unarmed people, you basically need to do away with the entire second amendment. And that's nothing but the truth. The difference in combat efficacy between an AR-15 and a Lever action cowboy is signficant, yes....but it's not that signficant when you're shooting a crowd of unarmed civillians. Both are so much more dangerous and powerful that it's like feeding mice to a python.

The moment Ar's were banned, shotguns would be glamorized and idolized. Even now, James Holmes used a 12 gauge shotgun in Aurora, to devastating effect.

My stance is that these sorts of tragedies will always happen, from time to time, but they could be blunted by have a stronger armed presence at "gun free" zones of any type, or abolishing gun free zones. Doing either of those would be signficantly more effective than banning a couple of guns, which are easily replaced by other, similarly deadly weapons.

Pardon me, HERE is the FBI report--http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8

Thank you Sir, I too appreciate your willigness to debate without insults. We need a dialogue, on every issue this country is currently facing...we don't seem to have one, unfortunately.

You have more patience than I do Lewbosky. After I saw the second red herring I was about done listening. Gun advocates need to present cogent arguments instead of logical fallacies if they want to be taken seriously. I do not see why people find it necessary to pander to the fallacy if their position is so arguably defensible. And all this coming from a lawyer (I'm gonna go vomit now).

So Tom, if we ban these specific assault weapons, and clips larger than 10 rounds...that's as far as you're willing to go?

What happens when, after the ban, someone walks in with a pump action shotgun, and since there is no armed person in a gun free school zone to oppose him, he could easily take out an entire classroom or two. Reloading isn't a huge chore, particularly with a couple of revolves strapped to your waist to shoot anyone who rushes you when you stop to reload. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3E5wtmWCk4 (that's a video of quick combat reload for a shotgun) The havoc that buckshot/birdshot can wreak at close ranges is an order of magnitude greater than what just about any Ar-15 assault rifle will do.

When someone kills 20 kids with said pump action shotgun, you don't think that should be banned as well? There's no real reason not to, if you're going to get the "assault weapons" because they're so dangerous, right?

What about someone walking in with 2 semi auto handguns, but restricted to 10 shot magazines? That's 22 dead children, potentially. (20 in the magazines, 2 in the chamber). And that's BEFORE the attacker does this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJXNPo5krvw That's right....these monsters can be reloaded with another 10 round magazine in less than a second. No time for anyone to react and charge the guy. The slaugter would only end when they either ran out of magazines, or the police or some other armed citizen showed up to stop them.

So you have to ban magazines, period, to really get to the point where you can unload a lot of bullets quickly. But you've still go revolvers...but two revolvers are 12 bullets...12 dead children!!!! Unfortunately, they can also do speed loading for revolvers--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AyBflw7gDU Not quite as fast as the magazines in the semi-auto pistols, but still, fast enough. You could kill as many people in a gun free school environment as you wanted to.

And when there's a slaughter with revolvers, we'll just need to go to single shots....and at that point, the 2nd amendment is basically dead. And by the time we get here, lunatics will be building bombs, instead of using guns. Or they'll use knives, or hatchets, etc...because a gun free schoolzone is full of children and women--young men are physically dominant and difficult to oppose, even with hand weapons, in such a setting. Again, you could kill as many as you want.

At what point in my "slippery slope" argument, did I make fallacious points? Once you start, based on the carnage that guns can cause, at what point do you logically stop? (Because we've seen this played out before, in England--they started down a slippery slope, and which each step down the slope failed to stop slaughter, they just kept rolling downhill) Even the most basic weapons are extremely dangerous if you are going up against defenseless people. I would WELCOME a well thought out response.

When I presented my example of why the slippery slope argument was fallacious it was not my example of where I stand or what I believe about the subject. It was just my example of why the slippery slope argument is fallacious. Bathrooms are dangerous rooms and kill many people. I do not believe that we should ban bathrooms. However, it is reasonable to gather together with builders, homeowners, and other experts to see if we can make a safer bathroom. When we get together, if we each believe that we have a common purpose of human safety, we can reach a compromise that doesn't include eliminating the bathroom, outlawing tiles, and covering floors and tubs with pillows. What do you think?

Why? What makes guns worse than baseball bats, or alcohol.?

It's not "The NRA" that you're "defeating". I'm a Democratic voter, as are many of my friends. I, and many of those Democratic voting friends, don't buy the NRA hype, but also don't agree with the intense resources and drive involved here in the urge to "control guns". I can't imagine anything that would make me vote Republican, but I can envision current Dems proposing activity in this arena that would stop me from voting for them.

Guns are a distraction. We have to powerful problems in our society that should be formost in *any* progressive's mind. Income inequality and Health care. Why should those trump "gun control" efforts?

Crime - of all types - is highly correlated with poverty, a result of income inequality and poor social justice. Give people hope, and they are less likely to commit crimes. Take it away, and what have they to lose?

Health care - That's easy. In the US, 110 people per 100,000 die medically preventable deaths each year. In France (the champions) the rate is around 65 per 100k/year. That's 45 ppl per 100k each year that die medically preventable deaths because of our crappy health care system. Most of them are old folks and children. That's something close to 160,000 people we could save with solid universal health care.

By contrast, gun crime kills around 2.9 ppl per 100000. Less than 12000 people last year - and that's THIRTEEN TIMES as many people that could be saved, and that's assuming you could save all 12,000 gun crime victims.

The fact is that there are many voluntary activities that kill as many or more people (including people who didn't agree to participate) than guns that *aren't* protected by a Constitutional Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

To be clear, I have no problem with closing the "gun show" loophole in a way that allows individuals to still sell personally owned weapons individually, but stops "unlicensed gun dealers" from driving the gun shows. I oppose the "assault weapon" bans often discussed because they're irrationally based on appearance, not function. I support criminal background checks by dealers. I oppose magazine capacity limits because they're irrelevant and pointless.

I'm not sure that I agree completely that poor social justice is the issue in the country, but your argument is overall rational. Gun control is a red herring, and would cause more harm than good. There are MUCH bigger fish to fry, on our way to a better country.

name me one massacre that occurred where the main weapon was a baseball bat.

there's your difference.

Look at Congress. We're not running against Romney.

Live in the real world, people! There are things we need to be fighting for that we can win and will make a difference!

Matt1245 - No, you're right, I wouldn't say poor social justice is "the" issue; I merely list it as one contributing issue. Cultural issues such as the inner-city gang "culture of honor" are bigger contributors than social justice - but I think that culture came into existence as a result of *past* social injustice, so *shrug*. You're right - there are much lower-hanging fruits to bat at on our way to a better country.

Ahoypolloi,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltona_massacre

Firstly, there you go. 6 people in a family brutally killed in a mass bludgeoning with baseball bats in 2004.

Secondly, why do only massacre's matter? If 50,000 people die in individual bludgeoning's each year, why is it less important to save them than it is to save say...200 people who die in massacres each year? What about their lives is less worthwhile, because they didn't die in a big group. The FACT of the matter is that if you compare the number of people killed each year with baseball bats, with the number of people killed with assault rifles, or through the use of the extra capacity above 10 rounds in a "high capacity" magazine, you'll see that there is literally no comparison.

So why aren't we going after baseball bats?

And why not alcohol? I could certainly point you towards more than a few mass slaughters that resulted from a drunk driver or two.

Steve---I won't dispute that point. The original cause of much of our problems does indeed lie in inequality.

Really?

So your vision of America is that we need to not be drawn into the tyranny that occurred after 1934. Americans need to be able to defend themselves against the despotic government that exists now, or will it have to get more despotic? When the revolution you are envisioning happens will the military members of my family and town be shot? Are they the targets? Or will it be the police, my neighbors? You want your undisciplined, untrained members of your citizens’ militia to be better armed than my town police, the National Guard, the state police? These are the people you are suggesting these gun owning people be arming for. You are not suggesting better prepared citizens. You are suggesting sedition. You are suggesting my friends, family and neighbors die for the coming battle.

I so don't agree with you, Yardbird. We've seen tragedy after tragedy involving guns being used inappropriately over the past fews years. It's past time to do something (besides arming everyone and his brother) to protect the innocent people of this country. The harm to the gun owners' egos pales in comparison to the heartbreak of losing a loved one to a senseless crime.

Tom, no one rationally thinks the current government is going to attack the citizens. In that area, my concern would be, what will it be like 40-50 years after guns are taken out of the hands of the citizens? Will the government become more, or less like a police state? Will it take more, or less power over our daily lives? I think the fact that the populace is generally well armed serves to deter government oppression. It's harder to start barging into people's houses and rounding them up, etc, if you know they might be armed.

JL---what about the tragedies that gun ownership prevents? A slight, frail young woman, set upon by a couple of large male attackers. Her gun frightens them away. A violent home invader shot before he can get into the children's room. A murderer shot and killed before he can knife his ex-wife. Doesn't it have to be looked at, in the aggregate? There are MANY deaths from guns each year. There are also many lives saved and rapes averted. You'll find that the latter receive very, very little media attention.

And JL, why not go after Alcohol first? Alcohol causes more deaths from drunk driving than guns do. Why should use of a drug for recreation be allowed to claim so many lives? The harm to the "party time" of alcohol users pales in comparison to the heartbreak of losing a loved one to a senseless crime.

Last I checked, we do have drunk-driving laws, with stiff penalties. And that legislation was the result of pressure from concerned citizens, famously MADD. I'm asking that we do something similar with firearms.

And I believe all this 'self-defense defense' of guns is highly over-rated. Mostly a figment of the imagination of someone who's watched too many action movies. In reality, someone commiting a crime (home invasion, mugging, etc.) has the great advantage over the victim, because the victim is caught by surprise. That frail young woman with the gun in her purse won't get it out fast enough, the dad whose house is being invaded won't get the gun out of the safe and loaded fast enough. You get the picture.

Most states already have significant penalties for crimes involving guns, where the simple possession of a firearm elevates the crime significantly - much like the ones that have been used in regard to alcohol. Many are so-called 'zero tolerance' laws, where it's an auto-magical felony. So that wish has already been granted. You're welcome.

The DOJ did an evaluation in the Clinton era and came to the conclusion that guns are used in self defense in the US 1.5M times a year. They did have some concerns and said 'legitimate' uses were probably less, but they set 1M as their low limit estimate and 1.5M as their upper limit. This wasn't Bush's DOJ, it was Clinton's.

Your misgivings are probably rational if you're talking about a person who saw a crime on television and got scared and ran out to buy a handgun at his local gun show. They're significantly flawed in relationship to most of the gun owners I know, who've taken classes, practiced, and learned the responsible and effective means of handling and using firearms.

But that's part of the problem. Anyone who actually takes the time to acquire, study, practice, and learn to safely and effectively use a weapon is quickly alienated by folks who then characterize them as "gun nuts" - while making the kind of uninformed observation in your second paragraph.

Steve, I don't think so. Read this: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html

Sounds way more plausible to me.

ML - Thanks for the informational reply. There's good information there, but I don't think it can be taken as "gospel", either. I've read Mr. Hemenway's work before, and I have a great deal of respect for him, but I don't subscribe to much of his analysis expressed in "Private Guns, Public Health". I don't challenge most of his facts, but his interpretations. I think it's going to be tough to produce anything like a "bullet-proof" or "objective" analysis of such a fraught topic.

But, as I stated above, no matter how you cut it, there are voluntary activities that we engage in all the time that kill more people - including those who didn't agree to participate in that activity - and don't bat an eye. The relative cost in health and well being *can* be calculated, and things like our crappy health care system damage FAR more people. 36 times as many people die medically preventable deaths (compared to gun homicides).

If we had this sort of sweeping national discussion, with petitions, pundits, and politicians crying for change every time 26 people died medically preventable deaths, we'd be doing it 40 times a DAY. Forty. Times. A. Day. They just have the misfortune of doing it one at a time, and not serving as proper political footballs for someone's agenda.

JL, I am not a researcher. I'm an attorney. I know enough about academic studies to know that you can essentially make them say whatever they want. I can point you towards the DOJ report under Clinton that Steve mentioned, if you would like? The main problem I see with the report you cite(and this does NOT necessarily make it wrong, just something that seems suspicious) is that quite a bit of their date comes from a telephone survey. I can point you towards other studies that show rather significant numbers of criminals report that they either were personally intimidated from robbing or attacking someone because they thought or knew there was a gun in the house, and a much larger number of them(a clear majority) saying they knew of other criminals who had been dissuaded from commiting crimes against individuals because they suspected they were armed.

You can do lots of things with studies and numbers...I would generally find a DOJ research paper to be more credible in the area of gun violence and self defense than that conducted by a private, liberal Ivy League college, particularly when the results of the DOJ run counter to the bias of the administration at the time, and the Harvard paper favors the (assumed, on my part, but not unreasonably I think you would agree) bias of the Harvard researchers.

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

" The political climate surrounding guns is so intense that studies have been done of studies that have been done about studies. Philip Cook, the director of Duke University's public policy institute, has examined the data behind the 108,000 and the 2.5 million figures and suspects the truth lies somewhere in between. "Many of the basic statistics about guns are in wide disagreement with each other depending on which source you go to," says Cook, a member of the apolitical National Consortium on Violence Research. "That's been a real puzzle to people who are trying to understand what's going on."

Here, a lead Duke researcher thinks the truth is somewhere in the middle of 100,000(the lowest estimate of legitimate defensive use of handguns each year) and 2.5 million(the highest).

Even being fairly favorable to those skeptical of the defense, and pegging the number at 300,000 defensive uses a year...that's a number much, much, much higher than the number of gun related deaths a year. And many of those gun deaths occur between gangs and criminals.

Finally, although Steve said most of what I would have said, and very well, I would like to make a clear analogy of MADD and what I think you're asking for.

As Steve said, we already have rules criminalizing the misuse of guns. I would even go so far as to favor the death penalty, or death by torture, whatever would make you satisfied, of people who use guns to kill others. Or even to commit violent crimes, period. That's FAR stricter than the punishments that generally fall on those that commit crimes because of, or under the influence of, alcohol.

Now...that wouldn't work. And it's not working for alcohol. An apples to apples comparison of proposed gun control and alcohol control to match it would be to ban guns, and ban alcohol.....or ban high capacity guns and assault weapons, and ban alcohol proof's over 20 percent, and strictly limit the sale of alcoholic beverages to one per customer, per week. This would be in order to ensure that it will be very difficult to become intoxicated, because that's what leads to these drunk driving deaths, and various rapes/crimes/etc.

I assume you would be all for doing this, correct? Say goodbye to ever having a little buzz, again. You don't need it, and the world will be a better place without the murdered children who were victimized because drunkards clung to their bottles. That is an apples to apples comparison of gun control and alcohol control, and that doesn't even touch on the positive uses of guns in society(and come on, there's little in the way of concrete positve uses of alcohol in society, other than a mild positive effect on health when used in absolute moderation)

Getting a little touchy there, Matt? An attorney, or did you say troll?

Of course you don't believe a Harvard research paper, because they're just smart people, not advocates for gun ownership. That makes them suspect right there for a lot of people. Interesting how the conservative bias has demonized intellect as something to be suspected and feared. I wonder how the Founding Fathers would feel about that?

No, it's practically impossible to prove a negative. Whether you're a data junkie or not (I managed data systems for a large corporation for many years), one thing that you almost cannot do is prove that something would have happened and didn't. Something to ponder.

People reporting that they defended themselves is almost certainly way overblown.

Just a little taste of the information in the link I provided in 6.6:

9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. Medical Care Solicitation by Criminals with Gunshot Wound Injuries: A Survey of Washington DC Jail Detainees. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 48:130-132.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Do Criminals Go to the Hospital When They are Shot? Injury Prevention 2002: 8:236-238.

JL, could you direct me towards what I said that was either trolling, or a result of "touchiness?" If so, I apologize, but I re-read what I wrote, and thought I was engaging in a rather courteous and urbane discussion with you.

I am somewhat suspicious of academic writing, in general. Not because they're smart people(they are, and that's a good thing), but because it's very easy to read your own biases into your work, and the simple fact is that many people at a school like Harvard are pro-gun control. Period. That's true of much of academia. It was certainly true of many of my compatriots at the 2nd tier(yes, a far cry from Harvard, academically) law school I attended, and mine was actually deep in the heart of the South, where gun control is significantly less popular than it is around...Harvard.

Secondly, if you're willing to believe that incidents of self defense are exaggerated, why not incidents of being threatened by a gun? Why can't those be similarly exaggerated, in your mind?

Thirdly, regarding the specific reference to criminals going to hospitals---I do have a couple of concerns about the validity of the study.

--1. They only surveyed 6 prisons, but used that data to cross reference against a potential 2.5 defensive hand gun uses in the country? That sounds like there could be a great deal of potential for distortion as the numbers on the prison data survey get scaled up. Why not just do a survey of 6 towns to see how common identity theft is. Depending on which 6 towns you pick, you'll get widely divergent answers. Sample size APPEARS to be an issue here.

--2. Succesful use of a handgun for self defense can run the entire gamut from the simple suggestion that a potential victim has a gun which dissuades the criminal from even attempting to target them, to brandishing of the gun at the criminal, to firing a warning shot, to firing at, to grazing, to wounding, to seriously wounding, and finally, to killing. I would imagine that as you go down the range from least violent to most violent responses to criminal attacks, the number of incidents would decrease, potentially exponentially. So even if there were 2.5 Million defensive uses of a handgun in a year(a number that I personally think might be a tad large), you might expect to see, not hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals, but maybe several thousand. And given that they would have been wounded by a decent, law abiding citizen who did nothing wrong, they would probably be somewhat less likely to go to a hospital than would a criminal wounded by another criminal---as they are(irrationally) in their mind, less in the "wrong."

And given that much smaller number, of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals, that might be swallowed up the scaling of issues applying data from only 6 prisons to an entire nation's worth of self defense data. Right? You work in data systems, you're the expert, not me. This is just my basic, common sense reading of the situation, so you could very well be right.

I would also like to respectfully point out that the DOJ study which largely disagrees with the Harvard study(and a variety of other studies, including those by non-partisan institutes, and even some places like Duke University) are done by smart people, who are also not gun advocates.

You always have to watch for bias. It creeps in(to everyone, me included). It's always more believable to hear someone publish something that runs counter to their bias, as opposed to towards it. Don't you agree?

I would also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the banning alcohol itself, or severely restricting that amount that can be sold to a person in any given period, as opposed to merely criminalizing the misuse of it, as has already been done with both firearms and alcohol.

Thank you Sally that was about time.

One of the first things that Obama did when he took office is to double down on two dumb wars. LYING POLITICIAN. In 2011 and 2012 he stayed as far as he could get from gun laws because he didn't want to lose the union vote. LYING POLITICIAN. Now he has put the vice buffoon in charge of gun control so the brady people can legislate and what kind of guns the dumb masses can legally own. He will then claim that the American people want the regs. that the Brady bunch has vomitted on the American people' saying "this isn't me doing this". The media will make up a few polls to verify, and away the guns go. I never said Obama was stupid. He will blame someone else in the end.

Inspector: Obama actually ended the Iraq war right on schedule, and your charachterization of doing nothing about gun control as a lie is disengenuous. In fact, Obama was specific in saying he was not coming after peoples guns. Reasonable gun restrictions are very popular, despite what you say, even with gun owners.

Obama was specific. "I'm not coming after your guns" He lied by omission. He never said anything about letting the senate do his dirty work. We'll just see the bill he signs. Just like ACA We won't know what is in it untill they vote for it. Very convenient for the President. People keep saying "reasonable restrictions" Whose reasoning are they going to use?

One of the first things that Obama did when he took office is to double down on two dumb wars.

How was this evidence of lying?

In 2011 and 2012 he stayed as far as he could get from gun laws because he didn't want to lose the union vote.

What the hell are you talking about? Union workers aren't notoriously pro-gun. There isn't something that Obama would have lost or gained by going after guns. Obama didn't talk about gun issues and neither did Romney. That's because they didn't come up except momentarily (as is always the case) after shootings in which case he always stated that he wanted to see more action taken to reduce these problems.

What evidence are you asserting that proves he's lying?

"I'm not coming after your guns" He lied by omission. He never said anything about letting the senate do his dirty work.

Because the President of the United States doesn't control the US Senate or vise versa. These are separate, but equal branches of government. If there isn't massive support to pass gun legislation then there won't be people pushing to do so in the US Congress. And the bill has to pass both chambers, NOT just that of the US Senate. Obama has never stepped up actions within the executive to take your guns nor has he ever been contradictory about policies regarding guns. The policy in question only came about after 27 people were murdered- most of whom were children. And even that isn't proposing taking your guns. What the hell are you even talking about?!

Just like ACA We won't know what is in it untill they vote for it

We knew what was in the ACA for 10 months before it was voted on. You either weren't paying attention or weren't reading. This is a deliberate misquoting of what the then Speaker stated about the situation. She stated that the American public (not we) would know what was in the bill after it was passed and the media stopped lying about it. Amazing how you leave that context out.

People keep saying "reasonable restrictions" Whose reasoning are they going to use?

....bills are passed by an agreement between the parties as to what laws will govern us as citizens. If people do not like the laws passed then they petition the congress and/or vote new people in and/or run for office to change the policy. We as citizens are the ones who make the decision as to what constitutes reasonable restrictions and we do so based on consequential outcomes, evidence, and empathy.

You are right they aren't pro gun, they aren't anti gun either. They really don't care if their guns are legal or not because they have a criminal mentality. If they are going to shoot someone (which is against the law), what the heck does it matter if the gun is legal or not. CartoontheNews, you are somewhat of an idealist. None of the crap you are spreading around here makes a heck of a lot of sense.

What the hell are you talking about? Who isn't pro gun or anti gun? Unions? Yeah because they're unions. What they care about is their prospective job which is why it's silly to pretend like Obama lied about gun control in order to appease unions. Unless there's some evidence out there that an obscenely large number of people who participate in unions have guns or an obscenely large number of union businesses are those that produce guns. In which case that'd be a logical argument, but otherwise it's nonsense.

But what does a criminal mentality have to do with anything regarding unions? You're suggesting that criminals don't care if guns are legal or not? OK what does that have to do with unions and what does that have to do with gun control? You're either going on an unrelated tangent to rant against an argument no one else made or you're making a complete strawman and pretending it's valid when it's not. Which fallacy is it?

What am I an idealist about? And what crap am I spreading? And why does it not make sense?

Cartoon, It is common knowledge that rank and file blue collar union members are pro gun. While the rank and file members can vote how ever they want in an election, we all know where the union dues go in an election. Obama did not want to lose the vote associated with the money so He (and his handlers) knew not to rock the boat with liberal anti gun noise. He left it alone and did not answer any questions about it during both elections. Double Ace misspoke about union members being criminals,It's just the union bosses that are prone to criminal activity. As far as ACA , You are channeling Steve Benan on that BS. Pelosi and Reid waited until 2 days before voting to release the full bill. No one could possibly read and understand what was in the 7000 pages of crap that they put out to vote properly on the substance of it. Hell, we're still finding out what is in that bill and it's been two years. Dems had the congress senate and the white house, so they rubber stamped it and rammed it up our a$$es. That bill was not out for 10 months before those morons passed it. As for gun control The Congress will be brow beaten by the president and the media until they vote to pass the load of crap that the Brady Bunch comes up with. Just watch and listen to the media and the president for the next three or four months on this and see if I'm right.

Not a horrible idea, but I'm leery of anything which prevents private sales in general. We're already sliding down that slope with so-called "intellectual property"—you aren't allowed to sell old software because you "signed" a "license agreement" instead of actually buying it. What you're proposing effectively means you are never really buying a gun, only paying for exclusive rights to use it for an unspecified amount of time.

I think your idea sucks. Private sales are just that. The government has no right to regulate private sales at all. Unless you want to regulate, knives, clubs, stones, cars, jet's etc. nothing will change. We all saw Jets kill nearly three thousand innocent people in one day. This isn't about anything other than gun control. They want to know who has what so they no how to go about confiscating them before they open the gulags.

The government has no right to regulate private sales at all. Unless you want to regulate, knives, clubs, stones, cars, jet's etc. nothing will change

By what logic do you conclude that the government doesn't have a right to regulate private sales? Precedence for that statement? Last time I checked the government can regulate any and all commerce. As for your latter portion you do realize that we do regulate guns, knives, clubs, stones, cars, and jets, yes? Knives and clubs probably have about the same amount of regulations nationally- although some states are very keen on limiting access to certain knives and the use of certain clubs. But cars and jets are highly, highly regulated and in fact the airline industry is one of the most regulated here in the US. Why you'd list that as an example is just insane.

We all saw Jets kill nearly three thousand innocent people in one day.

Red herring

This isn't about anything other than gun control.

Correct. This was a blog article talking about gun regulation I.E. gun control. Thank you for stating the obvious.

They want to know who has what so they no how to go about confiscating them before they open the gulags.

Yeah no. We aren't going to allow public policy to be stopped by the nay saying of conspiracy theorists and the paranoid. You have to have a valid reason for objecting to specific bans on weapons or other regulatory propositions. You can't just say that you oppose X because one day in the future something might happen that could have possibly been prevented by X. That's a slippery slope argument and it's just silly. Besides that the government can already figure out who purchases what guns (legally, anyways) by tracing serial numbers and gun sale records.

Cartoon Here is why the current administration has no business messing with gun laws. gun #1 http://www.spokanister.net/Guns_Nordic_AR22.html and gun#2 http://www.ruger.com/products/1022Carbine/specSheets/1103.html These links show the same rifle but liberals think they aren't the same. you can kill squirrels with either. Neither is an assault rifle.

I hope and pray you are right.

Although, I think there should be no concealed carry permits whatsoever. If you want to carry, it must be openly.

But then, you need to allow me to strap on a sword, too.

LDModell, As a Firearm owner and I don't belong to the NRA, I applaud any willingness to at least Discuss or come up with Ideas in regards to Firearms ownership. With that said, How do we incorporate the Mental Health issue with Firearm Purchasing / Ownership?

ATF interview? WTF. These guys are worse than the guys with the guns. Obviously they don't want citizens toi have guns they want them so they can ship them to the drug cartels south of the border, so they can kill DEA agents.

Yeah that's not what happened in Fast and Furious. F&F was the result of lax gun laws in Arizona preventing federal agents from stopping guns that were being trafficked across the border. The agents themselves did not do the trafficking nor was the program set up to traffic guns. That's a bunch of right-wing conspiracy crap peddled to cover the failure of Arizona to protect it's own population.

Joe: If Obama was a commie, don't you think we at least we would have single-payer?

The USSR could say it was socialist (or communist) but that didn't make it so; I can say I'm a purple unicorn, but that doesn't make me one.

Words have actual definitions regardless of how some may think otherwise.

And, no, the reason for the 2nd amendment was not to overthrow our government—the founders made that illegal right from the start.

The reason was so that the states would have citizen-supplied militias and the federal government would not have a standing army. The founders were philosophically opposed to having, and funding, a standing army. So, if you are really for the 2nd amendment, you should have no objections to registering yourself and your firearms with your state's National Guard unit. Have you done that...?

Well stated. There was need for a Navy to protect our shipping interests from piracy and foreign interference, but the founders had no intention of maintaining a standing army.

The 2nd Amendment allows citizens to bear muskets and flintlocks in support of a "well-regulated militia".

You are absolutly incorrect. Please read Anit-Federalist Papers. Yes, I served 5 years in the USMC.

Eddie the National Guard gets it's authority to exist from the 2nd Amendment. The US Constitution makes states expressly that if you use your own weapons against your government you are committing something called sedition and you may be punished with everything up to and including the death penalty. If the Founders had, had a different intention it would have been put in the US Constitution. But beyond this- what does your service in the USMC have anything to do with anything. I served in the USCG. So what? It's completely irrelevant.

Also the anti-federalist papers? So, in other words, you don't care what the founders have to say at all then.

Additionally linking to propagandist websites that themselves discredit what you're saying isn't evidence of what you're saying.

Brass: To you folks, all union members are "thugs", and everyone from Chicago is a "gangster". How then will you manage the database you propose? What if you belong to a union and you live in Chicago?

You are retarded? Living in Chicago is strike one, being a union member is strike two. Be careful what you swing at next.

No he is not. The President of the United States cannot enact laws; the President of the United States, however, can decide how to implement currently existing laws under his executive authority. You seem to confuse these two on the right. If a law isn't being implemented the way that you subjectively think that it should be you then immediately assume that the person in charge has changed the law. This comes from your lack of understanding as to how the legislative and executive branches work. The president has not proposed anything that has or will usurp the US Congress, current law is irrelevant, the US Constitution, and since the Bill of Rights is within the US Constitution this was simply redundant.

To sell such changes, the White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses.

No, genius, it means that Wal-Mart and other businesses stand to benefit from legal changes whereas organizations like the NRA stand to benefit from the status quo. So the article is saying that the White House is thinking of outsourcing assistance in changing the status quo from larger lobbying groups like that of Wal-Mart because of the effect it may have at countering the NRA. This is why you shouldn't separate sentences out of context: it makes your argument appear weaker and you end up responding to statements no one gave besides yourself.

Apples and oranges trying to compare Bush's attempt to privatize SS with an attempt at reasonable gun control. For one, reasonable gun control is very popular. If you try to work with Cantor, Ryan, and Boehner you get a big fat zero, and your implication that these common sense restrictions might not pass Constitutional muster is simply false. Guns and weapons are not specifically protected, you are not allowed to own bazookas for example. I say go for it, and if it's not a success, let them own it.

What a waste of time, there has never been a law that prevented an action be it: Murder, drunk driving, rape , armed robbery, breaking and entering,tax fruad. if I am wrong show me one law that prevents an action

This is known as a strawman. No one is proposing that you can get the number of illegal actions down to 0, but this is not why we do or don't outlaw something. We outlaw things on the basis of the harm it causes society so that the people committing the acts can be detained, punished, and/or removed from society for the safety of the public. In the case of someone who drives drunk that person can face years of jail time which, for the time being of imprisonment, protects the public from that person driving on the road and gives that person a chance to sober. If that person doesn't take the opportunity they can eventually wind up in jail for life for public endangerment. This isn't done to stop the crime, per say, it's done to prevent the public from being harmed as much as reasonably possible.

In the case of gun control the avocation for those in favor of gun control is that we can get the total number of mass shootings and the total number of gun related homicides to be reduced from 30 a day and a dozen a year to less than either of these numbers. If you are going to respond to the argument then you must respond to the argument ACTUALLY being given and not the one that exists ONLY in your head.

. No one has said what might have happened if there had been someone from the school that was armed, could he have been stopped, declaring our schools gun free zones is the same as declaring them free fire zone

Because that's a hypothesis you aren't making on any evidence. You don't know whether the presence of a gun would've done anything. More people could have died. You are only proposing the narrowed successful potential, but you're completely ignoring the other possibilities that would invalidate your claim entirely. That is why no one is arguing this because it's a logical fallacy.

There is absolutely zero evidence that a place being declared a gun free zone makes that place a target of crime versus a place that's declared a gun zone. Police stations and gun stores are routinely involved in violence and stickups and robberies so do not pretend like these locations are somehow safe from violence. Military bases and military personnel as well as police are often targeted for crimes. Not to mention that hundreds of police officers every year are injured or killed all while being armed. The idea that somehow the presence of guns automatically contributes to a reduction in the likelihood of a mass murder is completely false and has never withstood verifiable scrutiny.

The reality is places like schools, malls, shopping centers, etc. are chosen because they are enclosed areas where people will have only a limited area to run. Couple this with the fact that on any given day in America hundreds of people are going to be in these locations and you have a guaranteed blood bath. If your goal is to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible you are going to choose areas where the probability of that happening goes up. And that's going to invariably lead you to locations like schools, malls, etc.

to claim that tougher gun laws will make us safe, then Chicago should be the safest city in the country , they have the toughest gun laws, but that true Chicago was the murder capital of the country in 20012.

Actually Chicago doesn't have the toughest gun laws in the country. Would you believe the state with the toughest gun control laws is Vermont and the city with the toughest is actually San Francisco (which has relatively low amounts of gun violence)? Additionally as a state Illinois has relatively lax gun laws and it is surrounded by states with lax gun control laws. The problem with making the argument that you're making is that crime is not local. You make this arrogant and erroneous assumption that a person who wants to commit a murder can't simply drive 30 minutes outside of the city limits of Chicago and purchase a gun and then drive back into the city. That is completely ludicrous for you to propose and one of the largest failures made by the pro-gun control side. You cannot advocate for lax gun laws on the basis of local control areas having more or less crime unless you can definitively prove that guns from outside the area are not getting in.

For all those who call for more gun control, then have them agree to give up their carry permits and armed guards, IChicago is so safe the mayor travels with five armed plain cloth policemen 24/7. Guess it do as I say not as I do when it come to those wanting more gun control.

And this is completely ludicrous as well. Everyone is affected by crime: it is not specific to race, nationality, origins, age, gender, etc. Therefore laws have to go into effect that apply to everyone universally in order to have any chance of universally lowering the statistics of gun related incidents. What is more this is ludicrous because you'd be basically saying that in order for YOU to have the freedom to carry whatever weapon that you want everyone else has to live in fear and go bankrupt to hire a private security detail because YOU are, apparently, a sociopath. Yeah, sorry, but that's not the way that it works. This isn't evidence of hypocrisy: this is evidence of sheer stupidity.

Best comments I've heard so far, Cartoonthenews!

But many of those "gun control laws" are really laws controlling the AFT; laws that prevent actually controlling guns, inspecting gun shops, gun shop records, how quickly records can be destroyed, etc. So your argument based on numbers of laws is a fallacy.

99.9% of shell casings end up on the gun range floor. Thats a BS statistic I just made up, but it is likely close. In fact most ammo is never fired, it's hoarded by people feeling paranoid about our finely tanned President. You would likely run out of room engraving all the numbers, there is that much ammo out there...

OMG! This argument is getting old....

You don't have a right to "defend against a tyrannical government." If you ever use your weapon against a police officer or military personnel you will be tried for murder and depending on the circumstances sedition. These are federal crimes and constitutionally based crimes. That argument is getting old. If the founders wanted you to be able to defend against the government then the founders would not have expressly made defending oneself against the government a crime. This is more revisionist history from those who can't separate ideology from reality.

Look if you aren't in favor of banning certain types of guns or certain types of magazines that's fine. I don't personally know what regulations will work to get the number of deaths and injuries per year down. I also think that it will probably end up being a combination of efforts put into place (I think trying to come up with a one-stop-solution is unrealistic and futile). But do not peddle conspiracy theories as though those are somehow valid rebuttals to the concerns of Americans who want to stop people from being murdered as much as possible. And do not push this argument to an absolute that NO ONE is arguing. We already know you can never get the death toll to 0. But you can sure as hell try to get the death toll as low as possible and failure to do so on the basis of a delusional fantasy that somehow you're going to be the hero in a battle against the anti-Christ is just not going to fly.

Double Ace

What you call defending against a tyrannical government is called" Insurrections" in the Constitution and the government is entitled to defend itself against it.

Article 1 Section 8 Clause 15

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions

What you say is utter nonsense