I don't think that any reasonable person is concerned about the vast majority of gun owners who are conscientious and reliable. But, what about criminals, gangs and mental cases? How do we get guns away from them and keep them away? I am quite sure that there is not going to be any wholesale confiscation of guns. It would not work. Guns are here to stay. Besides, there are not enough fanatical anti-gunists to control Congress or the courts, and I think that most congressmen are too concerned about re-election to risk any major change. So, how do we get safer? How do we control or limit the ownership or possession of guns to "good" citizens? I think that "good" gun owners would be very troubled by "bad" gun owners and want to discuss and resolve this issue. What inconveniences, limitations or restrictions are acceptable to make our country a safer place in which to live? It may be a choice between fortifying our individual selves or making our country better. If gun owners are not willing to help with changes to make everyone safer, the anti-gun lobby will gradually get stronger and stronger and force changes that probably would not be as acceptable or effective. Sometimes doing the right and good thing is not the easiest thing to do.
Longer prison terms for crimes committed with a gun. More prisons if needed. Kill someone with a gun, life or the death sentence.
It would not be easy, but one can take the gun away from the gangsta by putting the gangsta in prison or at the end of a rope. First step, have the State or Federal government take out any member of any violent gang using old RICO, gun and Tax evasion laws. Build enough prison camps to house the 1 million new inmates. Elect enough GOP leaders in Congress and the White House to ensure the laws and courts will be able to punish these felons and keep them away from society and away from guns. Voting for Dems is just like voting for gangstas and murderers.
In our society, where liberty is valued above all else, and the right to arms is enumerated in our Constitution, we cannot possibly keep guns out of the hands of "criminals, gangs, and mental cases", as you call them. The ONLY way to prevent an individual from obtaining access to a firearm, is to incarcerate that individual. Any other method is just placebo. A policy change that will demonstrably mitigate the impact that violent criminals have on our society is to keep them incarcerated until they are no longer violent. A large percentage of violent acts are carried out by people who have previously demonstrated their propensity towards violence, and have been convicted, only to be turned out on our society to become violent again and again. Our choice is simple: either we pay whatever costs are associated with segregating violent people from peaceable society, or we accept and endure the violence they commit on us.
1: Convict them of crimes 2: Keep them in jail. It is impossible to create a law that will prevent people from breaking another law; any attempt to do so will fail.
Ayuh,.... Simply enforcin', 'n prosecutin' the current laws on the books is more than enough to make America the safest place on the planet,..... Actually, with the exception of maybe 100 counties that comprise the biggest cities in America,..... America is already the safest place on the planet,....
The posts above me are 100% correct. Aggressively enforce existing laws. No plea bargains and no early parole for violent offenders. FBI says that most that are convicted of gun crimes are repeat offenders. It is our justice system and our prison systems that keep putting criminals with long rap sheets back into society to create more victims. I disagree with you that gun owners need to capitulate to the anti gun legislators. The Anti gun lobby will keep pushing their agenda even if we give into their anti gun legislation. There has been nothing proposed in congress that would have stopped any of these high profile shootings. There is no proposals that will stop the violence that is committed by the demographic responsible for the bulk or our violent gun crime statistics. These inner city shootings are responsible for up to 70% of all homicides. These violent recidivists will not be affected by any new legislation unless the legislation focuses on justice system reform. If we give into the anti gunners, they will come back for more because there will be no significant change in our statistics. They will always be able to tout these stats to prove that we have not gone far enough in gun control efforts.
I think we as a society just have to accept some level of risk as a trade-off for freedom and individual liberties. Suppose there is a man we think might be the serial killer who killed 10 people. We don't lock him up just because there is a 10% chance he did it.
Be rational, do you leave your house every day without coming into contact with a criminal intent of killing you? The answer is "NO" Most of the public carry on their daily lives without ever coming into contact with a person with a gun.
With 13+ million CCW carriers out there, many people are in close proximity to a gun that they have no idea. That's why they call it concealed.
Not only that, but we cannot strip a citizen of his rights and liberty just because we think he might break a law in the future. They must commit some crime, or be judged mentally ill, and receive due process before they can be stripped of their rights and liberty. Since this is the case, we must recognize that statistically, some percentage of the "first offender" crimes will be violent. And, some percentage of THOSE will be very, very violent. There is no excuse for our criminal justice system to be turning known violent criminals back out onto our society, knowing full well that they will continue committing violent acts. But we cannot effectively eliminate the occasional violent acts committed by the previously law-abiding, while adhering to our core values of due process, liberty, and individual rights. These are the cost of our freedom.
That was my point.Concealed carriers are some of the most law abiding of all Americans. People have no idea that they have to trust these CCW's and don't even know it.
Aside from harsher punishment for criminals, society should recognize and accept that we live in an imperfect world. Liberty comes with accepting these imperfections. I don't want to live in a police state with cameras everywhere, check stations, random frisks or nitpicking background checks in order to stop a couple more crimes. The best we can do is eliminate those who are violent criminals and stop with the rehabilitation nonsense.
You are making the "compromise" argument - that gun rights supporters need to compromise and give up some of their rights to prevent a greater loss of rights in the future. We just spent the past 35 years fighting the gun ban lobby to regain our rights, and you want us to turn around a give up those hard won battles. In the 1970's, gun banners openly talked about handgun confiscation and total gun bans. Concealed carry of firearms was almost impossible. People who legitimately used a firearm to defend themselves were railroaded in court by anti-gun prosecutors who had great discretion in interpreting gun control laws. In many big cities, legal gun ownership was nearly impossible. Starting in the mid-1980's, states and people began to push back. Concealed carry was made "shall issue", meaning the ability to reject a permit application had to be based on specific fact, not the political preference of the permit issuing bureaucrat. Castle Doctrine was created to protect home owners from zealous anti-gun legislators and prosecutors. Stand Your Ground Laws did the same for people outside their home. Court cases such as Heller, Heller 2, and McDonald, made it clear that gun ownership was an individual right. And throughout all that time, crime went down - a lot. Gun crime and violent crime dropped more than 50% since 1991. The US has a lower violent crime rate than Canada, Australia, or the UK. And you want us to return to the past? No way. The gun control method is to incrementally advance their gun ban agenda. History shows us that when we compromise, the gun banners do not stop, but come back for more. There is no point short of a total ban at which the gun control people will be satisfied. No compromise with the gun control people.
If someone commits a violent crime and is convicted via due process and sentenced to incarceration (death is a moot point), the sentence should include the condition that they will NOT be freed until whatever applicable governing body determines that they are once again trustworthy enough to walk the streets with their full rights restored. If they cannot be trusted to walk our streets free...they should not be freed. Period. For some reason we started operating under this wacky notion that, if only we passed laws barring freed criminals from exercising their full rights as Americans, that we could free criminals we don't really trust...trusting them to obey those laws. IMO, that is insane, and until we quit doubling down on such nonsense, in effect expecting law-abiding citizens to accept limits on their rights so that criminals can walk free among us, we will never make our society "safer". Look at history. We didn't start barring felons from possessing firearms, for example, until 1968...today do more or fewer convicted felons commit another crime with a firearm? If a convict cannot be trusted to own a firearm, why did we let them out of prison to walk our streets free? Are you telling me that we can't trust them with a firearm, but we expect them to actually obey the law that prohibits them from owning one? Look at the history of gun control. Since 1934, and especially since 1968, we've passed countless gun control laws that infringe upon the rights of law-abiding folk that are allegedly aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Has the problem of criminals obtaining and using firearms to commit more crimes gotten better or worse since? If you think they have gotten worse, why do you expect doing more of the same to have a different result "this time", which is of course the very definition of insanity? In a nutshell, it seems the more the government has tried to control the behavior of criminals via more and more laws that also infringe upon the rights of law-abiding citizens, in many cases...the worse the problem of criminals and repeat offenders has gotten. Maybe it's time we made it less burdensome on law-abiding citizens to have the means to defend themselves by rolling back some of these laws, while at the same time keeping people locked up who cannot be trusted to be released?
We've been compromising since the Jim Crow gun control laws after the civil war that were designed to keep the "darkies" in their place. We've been compromising since 1871 when Texas banned the carry of handguns. We've been compromising since the early 20th century when state after state began banning or restricting concealed carry of firearms. We've been compromising since the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Act and the "Assault Weapons" bans in the 90s. We've been further compromised by endless executive and bureaucratic actions to the regulations of all of the above since. We started to roll some of this BS back in this century, but then got smug when the states started loosening up the requirements for concealed carry permits...where AGAIN we compromised by continuing to accept this wacky notion that we need government permission to carry a firearm..concealed or other wise. Not only do I refuse to compromise any more, it's time we got a lot more serious about rolling back all of this BS.
By putting violent people where they belong: jail. Oh, and leaving them there until they're either no longer violent, or too old to do anything about it.
For we who have been members of "the gun culture" for our whole lives, the idea of armed self defense is just common sense. For many others though, it's a long and painful process to contemplate what it means to prepare yourself to threaten, or even take another persons' life, under any circumstances. For them, it's far from the easiest thing to do, even though all logical thought says to carry through with that decision. In the current state of our society, what else can one do? I believe that the time will come when society will be forced to resort to Eugenics. People who can't live in peace with others will be prevented from reproducing. People who refuse to work will not be allowed to procreate. The ills of society can be bred out of society. If society expects to survive, this will happen.
You've had the response from the pro-carry crowd. Living in AZ, you must surely be aware that your State has Constitutional carry. If you're clean enough to pass a NICS check, and you have AZ residency, you can carry openly and or concealed with no permit of any kind. But you're right about the majority of Americans going day to day without ever encountering violent gun carriers. Someone else pointed out that with the exception of our Liberal Meccas, where self defense is all but illegal and the gang bangers are in constant battle, the rest of America is less violent than most other industrialized Nations. I believe that's true precisely because the bad guys know that there are more armed good guys than ever before. I'd like to be that fly on the wall in an average prison, and see how much the cons talk about spotting who is carrying.
