Smart gun laws

[Mars]

I'm pro-gun, but I'm not a big gun guy myself. It seems that our nation has a strong political stance of never changing gun laws ever. It also seems to me that many of our current gun laws are broken.

Probably most homes should have a shotgun and a pistol locked away for self defense, and every Hunter needs a rifle. I'm not sure what the public is doing with AR-15s though.

Personally, I do like the idea of more teachers carrying weapons, but that's just me. I know that concealed carry is frowned upon in LDS buildings.

Curious if anyone has any better ideas. Though to be fair, any idea, no matter how rational, would be met with loud NEVERs from the NRA. Chicago may be a good example of going too far in the other direction. There needs to be a healthier medium somewhere in between.

[Ddawg]

Good ..... good gun laws aren't bad goals to strive for. America has a long way to go in both.

It's your post. You define what additional "good gun laws" we need. As I have posted, the U.S. has literally thousands of gun laws on the books. You tell us what additional gun laws we need.

[BoiseBYU]

I'm pro-gun, but I'm not a big gun guy myself. It seems that our nation has a strong political stance of never changing gun laws ever. It also seems to me that many of our current gun laws are broken.

Probably most homes should have a shotgun and a pistol locked away for self defense, and every Hunter needs a rifle. I'm not sure what the public is doing with AR-15s though.

Personally, I do like the idea of more teachers carrying weapons, but that's just me. I know that concealed carry is frowned upon in LDS buildings.

Curious if anyone has any better ideas. Though to be fair, any idea, no matter how rational, would be met with loud NEVERs from the NRA. Chicago may be a good example of going too far in the other direction. There needs to be a healthier medium somewhere in between.

I’m probably less pro gun than you, but I can read the Second Amendment as well as anyone else. I think we need to start a discussion on good gun laws by recognizing that no law will stop evil. But that should not be the standard in my book. My standards would be are there laws that can mitigate or reduce catastrophic events and harm. To that end, I think banning assault weapons like the AR-15 is a good place to start. I’d also ban the devices that easily turn these weapons into fully automatic weapons, like the ones used by the shooter in Vegas. I think we could legislatively proscribe mentally ill people from having guns. I fail to understand the reason for armor-piercing bullets. I am no expert and imagine there are better ideas out there than what I have put up. I again do so knowing this will not stop evil again from rearing its head. We are a gun-soaked society with evil people in it. And no gun law will compensate for the absence of fathers, the societal breakdown of morals, and the lawlessness we see today. Surely though there are some measures we could take to make things better.

[BroncoBot]

Pro gun here.
I'm personally OK with getting rid of ar15, or maybe you have to be a member of the NRA to get one (since not a single attack has been carried out by a card carrying NRA member).
I think this issue is completely overblown. Kids have a 100% higher risk of being killed outside a school than in one. It's between 1 in 4 to 5 million odds of being killed at school in a shooting. Absolutely awful when it does happen, but it's sensationalized like airplane wrecks. We all know air travel is still much safer.
I do not know what you could do to eliminate the problem, or even decrease the the frequency of the shootings without severely stepping on millions of ppls rights as gun owners. Totally open to ideas though.
Protecting schools seems to be a start. No one goes into a govt building and shoots the place up. It's always public "no gun" zones and schools. As far as the Vegas shooting, until I find out more info, I'm writing it off as a evil person with an evil plan that could have been accomplished with a bomb. It wasn't like he suddenly had an impulse to shoot the place up. He had planned that out down to the last detail. (or so it seems, who knows what really happened).

[snoscythe]

Before we address guns, I think we need to address violence in media a little better.

Once we get to guns, I'd just like to see what exactly people are suggesting in an AR-15 or assault weapons ban. How exactly do you define what is being banned?

[BoiseBYU]

Before we address guns, I think we need to address violence in media a little better.

Once we get to guns, I'd just like to see what exactly people are suggesting in an AR-15 or assault weapons ban. How exactly do you define what is being banned?

Totally agree with you on violence in the media. And so there’s no misunderstanding, I’d include in that addressing video games. As for your Q, like I said, I am no expert, and my memory may be bad, but didn’t the US at one time ban assault sorts of weapons like the AR-15, but then a later Congress allowed that ban to lapse? Is there a problem with how Congress banned such weapons?

[BroncoBot]

Before we address guns, I think we need to address violence in media a little better.

Once we get to guns, I'd just like to see what exactly people are suggesting in an AR-15 or assault weapons ban. How exactly do you define what is being banned?

Totally agree with you on violence in the media. And so there’s no misunderstanding, I’d include in that addressing video games. As for your Q, like I said, I am no expert, and my memory may be bad, but didn’t the US at one time ban assault sorts of weapons like the AR-15, but then a later Congress allowed that ban to lapse? Is there a problem with how Congress banned such weapons?

Other than most likely being unconstitutional, no.
Also, what gun is not an "assault weapon"?

Current generation craves attention. Is that adults fault? Possibly. Is it part of the social and media construct that they consume daily? Also a possibility. I think the media could do a much better job of downplaying the shooting events (removing sensational buzzwords and putting the story on page 3 or 4 instead of page 1). Instead they can't help but let their emotions get the best of them and in turn try to guide the "gun control" aspect of the shooting. This makes the victims fodder for their political goals.

[Ddawg]

I think banning assault weapons like the AR-15 is a good place to start.

Ok. Ban the AR-15. It's a semi-auto rifle with black plastic on it. What happens after you ban the AR-15 semi-auto and the mass murderers switch to Ruger mini-14. It's semi-auto too. Shoots the exact same ammo as the AR-15. Now what?

Here's the Ruger -
https://ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html

Are you going to ban all semi-auto rifles? Then they switch to semi-auto pistols. Ban those too? Then the maniacs switch to revolvers. Ban all revolvers? Then they switch to driving a car down the sidewalk through crowds of people like the terrorists do in Europe? Then what - ban cars? See? There are answers. No one wants to address it.

[imuakahuku]

As mentioned if you ban the assault rifle then the next thing you will have to ban is the assault knife. Then the assault bat and the assault ax handle. This is not a gun issue. The ar-15 is not much different from other hunting rifles. It’s just made to look like a weapon of war. And kids used to take rifles to school so they could leave from there to go hunting.
As for guns, the second amendment is not about the right to go hunting. It is about a well regulated militia which was further defined by the founders to mean the militia is “the whole of the people”. In other words it is the last protection and a reset button against a corrupt government. It seems unlikely that that should ever occur but the way the leaders of the last administration sure ran it close. We almost had a silent coup perpetuated by leaders of the FBI, State Dept, White House, Justice Dept and others. And bear in mind the Constitution was inspired by God.
One last point, the deadliest single act of terror was done using assault box cutters and assault commercial airplanes. Those are still legal.

[BoiseBYU]

I think banning assault weapons like the AR-15 is a good place to start.

Ok. Ban the AR-15. It's a semi-auto rifle with black plastic on it. What happens after you ban the AR-15 semi-auto and the mass murderers switch to Ruger mini-14. It's semi-auto too. Shoots the exact same ammo as the AR-15. Now what?

Here's the Ruger -
https://ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html

Are you going to ban all semi-auto rifles? Then they switch to semi-auto pistols. Ban those too? Then the maniacs switch to revolvers. Ban all revolvers? Then they switch to driving a car down the sidewalk through crowds of people like the terrorists do in Europe? Then what - ban cars? See? There are answers. No one wants to address it.

Those strike me as reasonable points and questions. And they highlight that the devil is always in the details, don’t they? For me, I’d consider banning any semi automatic weapon. The risk of mayhem being caused is worth it in my book. The fact that evil people will do evil things with vehicles or other weapons of harm is not for me an argument to do nothing. For example, the fact that a ban on some abortions will cause some women to resort to getting illegal and possibly unsafe abortions is not a reason in my book to do nothing. If that were the standard, we’d never do anything. We can always imagine possible problems. We should not let perfect be the enemy of good. I also do not think that the difficulty in drawing a line of what guns to ban and what to allow is an argument to do nothing. We do that all the time in our various legislative decisions. Finally, I do not think that the argument that once you ban, for example, armor piercing bullets, the door is open to a complete ban on everything is persuasive. Such all or nothing arguments find no support in our constitutional jurisprudence, at least as far as I can tell. And if you think about it, It is exactly the same argument abortionists make—we cannot support banning late term abortions, because then we will be opening the door to more incremental restrictions. I say hogwash on that. So that is where I stand. I think those thinks would have a good chance of 8mproving things in our country. I am sure there are other better ideas out there that I’d be willing to consider. The status quo for me is unacceptable.