heywood on 8/6/2016 at 21:50
The proposal to ban persons on the terrorist watch list from buying a gun is unconstitutional because it would violate the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments. It's a secret list with very loosely defined criteria for inclusion such that the government can put anybody on the list for the loosest of undisclosed reasons. A government audit a few years ago concluded that it's full of errors, and there have been embarrassing examples of false positives, and actual terrorists who didn't make the list. I don't think you can conclude that the people on the list are necessarily terrorists, would-be terrorists, or even terrorist sympathizers. It shouldn't be used for anything other than targeting surveillance. Certainly not as a basis for infringing on people's civil rights.
Starker on 9/6/2016 at 01:46
The idea is that when owning a gun is a privilege instead of a right, it makes it easier to stop people amassing guns for a planned shooting. You wouldn't have to suspect, you'd know they are up to something. Otherwise, if someone is really dedicated and acts alone, there isn't really anything anyone can do to stop them outside of 24/7 surveillance.
heywood on 9/6/2016 at 12:22
Even if gun ownership in the US was a privilege instead of a right, I still could not support banning gun sales to people on the terrorist watch list. More generally, I wouldn't ban them from anything, due to the nature of the list and the way it's compiled and managed. I have the same complaint with the no-fly list and other government watch lists.
There are plenty of idiots in this country who believe that if the government put somebody on the list, they must be a bad guy. And if they are a bad guy, they deserve to be stripped of all rights even if they haven't done anything wrong. Setting aside all the people who are erroneously on the list (I've heard estimates of 30%), most people who are legitimately on the list are there for thought offenses like posting a link on Facebook to an anti-American rant by an Islamic cleric. These people are not allowed to travel like the rest of us because they think wrong. This is the new McCarthyism.
Fortunately, things are getting better. The no-fly list has been challenged in court in many separate cases over at least 10 years. For most of that time, the government was successful in getting the cases dropped by declaring state secrets privilege (another sore point with me FWIW). More recently, over the last two years, the government has been losing these cases. A turning point was Latif v. Holder, where a judge ruled that the no-fly list is unconstitutional based on a lack of due process, and ordered the government to fix it. As far as I can tell, the government basically ignored that order and continues to use the list, but they are consistently losing in court now.
Getting back to gun control, the proposal to ban gun sales to people on watch lists is obviously unconstitutional, and Obama and other proponents are aware that even if it was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President, it would be immediately challenged and struck down. The only reason why they are talking about it is that the Democratic party has been trying to cultivate gun control as a 2016 election campaign issue.
Starker on 9/6/2016 at 16:43
The idea I'm talking about doesn't really have anything to do with putting people on lists. The idea is about stopping people from amassing guns for a massacre, which is not always possible when just about anyone can buy a gun for any reason. Making them go through illegal channels means, for example, that the police can set traps for them. Also, like I said, it's a minor point, really, not the main purpose.
The US is pretty much unique in having gun ownership as a constitutional right. Most countries that have ever had something like that have changed it. It's only US, Mexico and Guatemala that still have something like this in the constitution.
faetal on 9/6/2016 at 21:19
I think a lot of the problems could be solved by simply banning the right to carry them in public. In the UK, if you are caught with a gun in public, you're probably going to prison, so very few people would risk it. UK gun crime is practically non-existent despite (as was clarified earlier) a deceptively high amount of gun owners. Of course criminals still carry guns outside with them if they are planning to do something, but it's very rare simply because criminals don't expect their victims to carry guns, so they have less cause to risk arrest for carrying one. In the US, the gun is the baseline threat (varies by state of course), so it's a default thing to carry for offence and defence (though defence remains debatable since someone generally has to have their gun already in play to determine if you'll also need yours, by which point it's too late to use it).
scumble on 10/6/2016 at 22:57
Quote Posted by Starker
The idea I'm talking about doesn't really have anything to do with putting people on lists. The idea is about stopping people from amassing guns for a massacre, which is not always possible when just about anyone can buy a gun for any reason. Making them go through illegal channels means, for example, that the police can set traps for them. Also, like I said, it's a minor point, really, not the main purpose.
The US is pretty much unique in having gun ownership as a constitutional right. Most countries that have ever had something like that have changed it. It's only US, Mexico and Guatemala that still have something like this in the constitution.
I still think the massacre scare argument is a red herring given that career criminals aren't the perpetrators that end up committing those sorts of crimes. Also, comparing the massacres to the baseline rate of murder does show them up as shock events. Most of the time people aren't too interested in criminal underworld problems - unless they are watching a crime drama.
I think it's likely the UK has never had very high rates of gun homicide, even when there were few restrictions on gun ownership. So I tend to think the general cultural environment is more important. That's not something a bit of legislation can change.
faetal on 11/6/2016 at 09:32
Massacres are a marker. Nowhere in the word has anything like the frequency of the US for mass shootings. They're a shock event, but they're not normal - they're symptomatic of a much larger problem.
PigLick on 11/6/2016 at 11:02
Well as a little reminder about the danger of guns, a couple of police shot a guy who was wielding a knife in a shopping district over here and they managed to wound 3 innocent bystanders, all of them elderly ladies. Nice going.
Volitions Advocate on 11/6/2016 at 19:54
The funny thing about that I think is that incidents like that might also be attributed to a fear of guns and strict gun control.
Think a few years back to NYC when those 2 cops shot that guy who who was waving a gun around the empire state building. They missed tons and ended up shooting 9 other people by accident.
After the outrage and complaints about inept police officers, a lot of the details surfaced about what the police in NYC are expected to do. All of their service pistols are DAO pistols, which means they are specifically built to be a pain in the ass to shoot. (that's just my inflammatory opinion). They have pistols that are Single/Double Action (SA/DA) meaning after they fire the first shot, the semi-automatic action of the handgun will cock the hammer for them for each subsequent shot. Meaning the first shot would take about 11-13 lbs of pressure to break, with all the subsequent shots taking 4 - 6 lbs. It's much easier to shoot a gun accurately that you are not squeezing with a death grip just to pull the trigger. Those cops instead had guns expressly modified to require a heavy Double-Action trigger pull of around 13 or 15 lbs. In a heated stressful situation that means good marksmanship is an extremely difficult thing to have. All because somebody says cops need to have a handicap with their sidearms for some reason. I will have to look for the article describing the gun stuff in detail, but I remember reading it. It was written as a direct response to this incident.
(
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/25/nypd-shooting-bystander-victims-hit-by-police-gunfire.html)
I don't understand why things like this are required of people who are supposed to protect us with force. It does not turn out well.
Not quite a couple years ago on parliament hill when Zehaf Bibeau stormed our federal government building. He killed Corproal Nathan Cirillo at the National War memorial where he was posted, guarding the memorial and essentially, Parliament Hill. He wouldnt' have had a chance to fight back, because Bibeau shot him in the back, but the other soldier on duty wasn't able to do anything about it either because both of their guns were empty. As required. Why it makes sense to have a soldier guard something with an empty gun is beyond me. Bibeau ended up inside the parliament building on his way to the House of Commons to start shooting our MPs. It wasn't until the house head of security grabbed his gun from his desk (where he wasn't supposed to keep it) and shot the guy in a John Woo reenactment that anybody was safe. (he's the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland now)
Same thing happened in Sarajevo. Canada was there at the behest of the UN, but were not allowed to have loaded rifles out on patrol in the City. The UN apparently allowed them to have an empty magazine in the rifle to help them look more formidable... wow, what a concession.
It wasn't until after a bunch of kids, who were giving the soldiers flowers and toys in exchange for candy through the slits in the bunkers, were blown apart by mortar fire that our soldiers stopped following the UN directives. As I understand it there were a lot of dead rebels turning up over night with seemingly no explanation.
Sometimes our fear of guns can be really misguided. Situations like these are pretty good examples.
Starker on 11/6/2016 at 20:30
It depends on whether you want a society where violence is the first resort and the police act with extreme prejudice or a society where violence is the last resort and the police consider non-violent options first. Parts of the USA lean towards the former while parts of Europe lean towards the latter, with a lot of grey area in between.
