Originally Posted by
Calliander
Sorry for the late reply here. I decided to read through this thread in an attempt to understand where the conversation has been. How does a grown adult say something like this to another person? I'm sure IP is annoying to you but there's no need for us to use this kind of language with anyone ever.
IP and others who seem to be against "gun control," along with those who think we should just ban all guns outright, listen: I don't want them to take your guns away if you are a responsible gun owner. I do want your guns and your psychological profile in a national registry, though. I want your gun list updated every time you buy a gun and I want the psychological profile updated on a basis consistent with your locality (say, every 1, 2, 3, etc. years). I want the federal government to be entirely in control of that information so that you can go to a gun show and sell your guns to someone or sell to someone online and have 100% free access to that information before you sell it - think of it like a credit card, where you run identifying information and it says "approved" or "declined." If your guns get stolen you can then report that action.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those ideas despite how anyone might try to rebut them: We are talking about deadly weapons being used mainly for hobby or livelihood or, sometimes, purely for self-defense. The "Second Amendment" argument is largely reactionary and upon discussing with most people they admit they understand that circumstances were different when the "right to bear arms" was bandied about. Throw out the "anecdotal" accusation all you want but the ideas above are an amalgamation of talking to quite a lot of my friends who are gun owners because I don't own any guns and I have no desire to use them so I didn't feel my view was educated enough. These friends use their guns for things as mundane as the occasional trip to a range to let off a few rounds all the way to protecting their animals from coyotes or wolves. We all spoke to each other like sensible adults and came to a consensus about it all. None of them quoted "self-defense" as a reason for why they have their guns - even the ones with families (the terms used for the "self-defense" folks were 'paranoid' and 'fearful'). The big concerns were worked out by everyone involved.
The "national registry" hoopla boiled down to two points: the small-government folks worried about the "national" part of it and then there was concern about its application at places like gun shows - nobody wants to pay these "background check" private companies just to sell a gun and the buyer would lose interest so then there would be no sale. The "national" part eventually was deemed as necessary since, again, we are talking about deadly weapons, and also everyone agreed that it would be better for localities to collect and manage the information that feeds into the "national" database (as opposed to using, say, FBI profiles). So my friend in South Dakota, who uses his AR-15 to bump-fire at coyotes after the animals on his farm and has no neighbors for three miles, can renew his permits (including CCW) every year like usual but has to go in for a psychological profile every 3 years or so. Oppositely, my friend who lives in Los Angeles, CA, who uses his handguns at a range to "let off steam" every now and then, would probably need to get in every 6 months to a year. These are just guesses at term periods but they seemed reasonable to my friends.
If your gun gets stolen, you're protected - you know, unless you left it on your front lawn with a "no dog to beware" sign or something. If you sell a gun online after a buyer was approved, then that person commits a crime with the gun you are protected. If the county/whatever law enforcement and administrative people did their duty but the psychologist didn't (or vice-versa), there's a clear trail of what went wrong. Even the most staunch anti-tax friends were okay with spending money on this.
All of it *also* leads to the root of all these mass killings: MENTAL HEALTH. As the sibling of a mentally ill person I can say that, unless you're rich, you're screwed. From false accusations of discrimination based on mental illness, to being able to locate a quality mental health professional, it blows. For any of the ideas above to work well, we would need to take it a lot more seriously instead of just looking at people as "crazies" and spending 15 minutes with them before writing a prescription.
And yes, a couple friends did not agree to any of this stuff but they also are fairly immature/unstable people whom we don't think should be owning guns anyway (but do, but maybe with the ideas above they wouldn't).
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