Discussions versus Tantrums

Denninger expounds on a topic we touched on a few days ago, how the gun control crowd distorted statistics for emotional mileage.  Click over and read it.  The reality is a little different, as Karl points out:

The point here is that we're less than six months into the year and Chicago has had 141 people shot and killed thus far (as of 6/14).  Chicago, one city, has more than ten times the number of people shot and killed in six months than a three-times-longer period across the entire nation in our 98,817 public schools.  

 (The embedded link and emphasis are from Denninger's original.)


See, if they were really concerned about the loss of human life, they would try to fix Chicago which has long had very strict regulations on firearms.  I get over in Illinois every once in a while as part of my job, and I have some friends around Springfield, IL.  One of them refers to the "draconian gun laws" that restrict them even in the downstate and more rural areas.  I think you have to have a license to buy or own firearms and ammunition.  I think the acronym maybe FOID, which might be Firearms Owner Identification.  Of course you don't need a photo ID to vote in Illinois.  That would unfair and unjust and a terrible hardship on the Chicago precinct captains herding their voters from poll to poll.

Anyway, I've been thinking and wondering if there really is something we could do to prevent some of this senseless death and destruction.  Even though we are only talking about twelve or fifteen people being killed in eighteen months in a nation of over 300 million, why does it happen?  Does it have to happen?

My problem with gun control is that I think the motives of the anti-gun crowd are disingenuous, for the most part.  I genuinely want to stop these acts, and there may some of the anti-gunners who really think some of these measures might help.  Most, though, simply want to disarm the average citizen because that makes us more dependent and more compliant.  More European, in other words.

I would be willing to treat guns more like cars.  I would be willing to have potential gun owners pass the equivalent of a drivers test to demonstrate a minimal level of knowledge, skill and safe handling.  Licensing owners makes more sense to me than licensing guns.  And you might even have levels -- you know, there's the basic drivers license, then there is motorcycle qualification, then there's CDL -- professional level drivers.

With a basic drivers license, you can drive any four-wheel vehicle on a public road that you can afford to buy and drive.  You get motorcycle qualified, you can ride a TW250 or Z1.

I'd like to come up with a standard way for people to own whatever firearms they like without a lot of hassle.  Further I don't see why driving without a license is a minor "traffic violation" while even having a concealed weapon without a permit will get you a felony conviction.

If we are going to make guns more like cars then fine.  You don't have to get special permission from the government and pay a special fee to put a muffler on your car.  Why do you need to jump through hoops to put a suppressor on your rifle or handgun?  Suppressors, above all, are a totally commonsense, reasonable thing.  I won't say they should be required because of the prevalence of older designs and classics, but they should certainly be encouraged rather than penalized.

Removal shoulder stocks for handguns, short-barrel rifles, short-barrel shotguns, smooth-bore handguns, there's no good reason for these weapons to be restricted and require special licensing.

If you have passed your test and have your shooters license, that should be all you need to purchase, carry and shoot the weapon of your choice.

These are just ramblings.  I'm still working on my manifesto.

But, again, my point is to address the problem of senseless murders.  The point of the gun controllers, too often, is to demand that more laws be passed which will do nothing and would have done nothing to prevent the crime.  Even Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, who signed a controversial magazine ban after the Aurora shooting, admitted to some Colorado sheriffs he no longer thinks his law is all that great:

But in the end, Hickenlooper said that he hadn't had all the facts from the beginning of the debate. And he questioned the efficacy of the law.

"If we'd known that it was going to create -- that it was going to divide the state so intensely, I think we probably would have thought about it twice," Hickenlooper said.

That's exactly what happens when you go off based on misleading visuals and emotional arguments.  You have another stupid, pointless, worthless limitation that adversely impacts the law-abiding citizen but does nothing to effectively limit the options of a law-breaker, like, say, a mass murderer.