Violent Games Legislation Introduced to US Congress

[GoFins!]

The thing about this is that if you DO judge someone harshly by the "content of his character" or disagree with his actions, and that person is not "white", then by the standards of many people, you're still a racist.

[TheWalrus]

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I don't know the details of the Australian buy back (My Internet connection sucks right now), but there is one thing that is for sure different in the US than anywhere else. We were raised on a culture of guns being a right, not something the government gave you.
Buy backs are great for clearing out the old and useless guns law abiding citizens want to get rid of. If you're counting on gun buy backs to eliminate weapons and drasticaly reduce gun violence on any grand scale, you're in for a rude awakening.

I don't know if you're being purposefully evasive but I was asking you to pick one of three options.

In Australia I'm pretty sure what they did was seize the guns and then give fair market value to their owners, if that helps you choose.

[Locke]

The thing about this is that if you DO judge someone harshly by the "content of his character" or disagree with his actions, and that person is not "white", then by the standards of many people, you're still a racist.

You must debate some ridiculously stupid people, then. No one would ever accuse you of being racist for disagreeing with a black dude unless you say something along the lines of him being wrong because he's black...

[Bumpus]

I don't know if you're being purposefully evasive but I was asking you to pick one of three options.

In Australia I'm pretty sure what they did was seize the guns and then give fair market value to their owners, if that helps you choose.

Hang on ...

Are you proposing that the US government should seize it's citizens firearms, in return for their decision of what fair value is?

Forget for a second how "fair value" is determined in eminent domain situations
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- How in the hell do you propose this could be achievable?

[TheWalrus]

Hang on ...

Are you proposing that the US government should seize it's citizens firearms, in return for their decision of what fair value is?

Forget for a second how "fair value" is determined in eminent domain situations
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- How in the hell do you propose this could be achievable?

I'm not proposing it. I'm just trying to determine what MoFins in particular thinks would happen under that hypothetical situation since it would shed light on what he thinks about gun control measures in principle.

My contention is that gun violence would lessen. Once we're all agreed on that -- and I think we should be -- then comes the debate over whether the amount that it's lessened (depending on the actual measure that's enacted or proposed) is worth the loss of freedom it would take. And that part -- the trade off -- is really the interesting debate, imo.

[Bumpus]

I'm not proposing it. I'm just trying to determine what MoFins in particular thinks would happen under that hypothetical situation since it would shed light on what he thinks about gun control measures in principle.

My contention is that gun violence would lessen. Once we're all agreed on that -- and I think we should be -- then comes the debate over whether the amount that it's lessened (depending on the actual measure that's enacted or proposed) is worth the loss of freedom it would take. And that part -- the trade off -- is really the interesting debate, imo.

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Well if the government was able to seize ALL guns, of course gun violence would lessen. Nobody would have 'em.


The problem is, how could that possibly be accomplished here? Voluntary (mandatory) buy-backs? Interesting theory, but what about those who don't go along with the program? Should the army roll through the country, conducting thorough searches of every home to ensure that they've gotten them all?

Last I checked, there was no magic wand that could be waived that would result in the purging of firearms in the US.

... To say nothing of wiping one's ass with the Bill of Rights.



Maybe I just don't get where you're going with this.
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[TheWalrus]

The point isn't the mechanics of how a buyback would work, though Australia's would be a model. The point is what you think the effect of it would be. Until there's some agreement on the notion that trying to take guns (or at least some guns) out of circulation is going to have a positive effect on gun violence in this country, there's little reason to debate how you would achieve it.

Here's a story on what Australia did, by the way:

The author of a report on
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that was instituted after a mass killing in 1996 says the United States would have many fewer deaths by dramatically decreasing the number of households with guns, the Sydney Morning-Herald reported.

The
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Agreement -- reached among the political parties less than two weeks after a gunman killed 35 people and injured 23 at a Tasmanian seaside resort -- cut firearm homicide by 59% over the next two decades and firearms suicide by 74%, the report showed.

The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns and put in place a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

The buyback led to the destruction of 650,000 guns, the Sunshine Coast Daily
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.

...

Andrew Leigh, as an academic at the Australian National University, published research in 2010 on the NFA and found that the gun buyback program lowered the proportion of Australian homes with guns from 15% to 8%.

''Our gun buyback took about a fifth of our guns out of circulation but it approximately halved the number of gun-owning households,'' Leigh, who is also a Labor party MP, said, the Morning-Herald reported. 'If the U.S. could dramatically decrease the number of households with guns, it would have many fewer deaths."

...

In his 2010 report, Leigh wrote that there were several important factors in assessing the extent to which the result of the Australian gun buyback program could be extrapolated to other countries.
Among them:

• Australian borders are more easily controlled than in countries that have land borders;
• Australia's government in general and its policing and customs services in particular are highly organized and effective;
• The NFA had an extremely high degree of political support and was quite competently executed;
• The buyback was accompanied by a uniform national system for licensing and registration of firearms.

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[Bumpus]

The point isn't the mechanics of how a buyback would work, though Australia's would be a model. The point is what you think the effect of it would be. Until there's some agreement on the notion that trying to take guns (or at least some guns) out of circulation is going to have a positive effect on gun violence in this country, there's little reason to debate how you would achieve it.

Here's a story on what Australia did, by the way:



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A voluntary buy back wouldn't affect criminals. They wouldn't give 'em up. My theory is - If they know that John Q. Public is unarmed, they would become even bolder. They understand the concept of getting shot. That's helps explain the tendancy to go after "soft targets" ... Like gun free zones.

"Mandatory" gun buy backs without TOTAL enforcement, would effectively turn the entire country into a "gun free zone" - except for the criminals of course.



IMO, the concept & the mechanics are inexorably linked in this case.

[GoFins!]

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Well if the government was able to seize ALL guns, of course gun violence would lessen. Nobody would have 'em.

True ... for about 5 minutes.

All the guns we've exported would become extremely valuable and would jump to the top of illegal imports.


An Honest Liberal Writes about "Gun Control":

But these gun-control efforts, while noble, would only have a modest impact on the rate of gun violence in America. Why? Because it's too late. There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America – many legally owned, many not. Each year, more than 4 million new guns enter the market. … America's level of gun ownership means that even if the Supreme Court – which ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment gives citizens the individual right to own firearms, as gun advocates have long insisted – suddenly reversed itself and ruled that the individual ownership of handguns was illegal, there would be no practical way for a democratic country to locate and seize those guns.

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Find and confiscate 300,000,000 guns AND prevent guns from being smuggled in ... that's a huge task that our fully armed and trained military has never been able to accomplish against civilains without Constitutional Rights and Protections.

---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:45 PM ----------

If you're counting on gun buy backs to eliminate weapons and drasticaly reduce gun violence on any grand scale, you're in for a rude awakening.

Reality is never polite to ideologues.

[TheWalrus]

A voluntary buy back wouldn't affect criminals. They wouldn't give 'em up. My theory is - If they know that John Q. Public is unarmed, they would become even bolder. They understand the concept of getting shot. That's helps explain the tendancy to go after "soft targets" ... Like gun free zones.

"Mandatory" gun buy backs without TOTAL enforcement, would effectively turn the entire country into a "gun free zone" - except for the criminals of course.



IMO, the concept & the mechanics are inexorably linked in this case.

Ok, then. Just to clarify, you believe that gun control generally and a mandatory buyback specifically would result in an increase in gun violence? Would that be a fair characterization of your view?

As for total enforcement, the Australian initiative did not remove guns completely. It cut the number of homes with guns in half (removing about a fifth of the total number of guns), which coincided with a 59% drop in gun related homicide.