Sqrl said:
The people who lost on election night aren't in office. The people who are in office actually won on election night and as such they do in fact have the right to form an opinion and vote based on that. Like any person there are things they are willing to compromise and things they are not. Why should they stop representing their districts and the people they serve because other states shifted their position? @gun control, It's really very simple to me. Screening for mental health problems or violent crime convictions is fine, but much beyond that and you're violating the 2nd amendment. If some people think that is a problem then propose a constitutional amendment to change or abolish the 2nd to whatever effect that you can get three fourths of state legistlatures (or state conventions) to agree to. The simple fact is that the 2nd amendment states pretty plainly that we have the right to keep and bear arms and that right shall not be infringed. The language is extremely explicit, and despite that people try to cloud the issue with a bunch of irrelevant non-sense about what harm guns are capable of. Well guess what, nobody is arguing that they are dangerous weapons... yes guns are good at killing people, they are designed to inflict damage at the whim of their wielder. In the hands of the wrong people they can cause a lot of harm, particularly someone who is well trained and dedicated to his actions. Stating this makes a good case for guns as effective weapons (and well trained soldiers as well). This does not make a case for stripping a constitutionally protected right from the vast majority of people who do not abuse their rights. Your entire argument is to allow the minority to dictate through irrational and/or radical actions (that are illegal and already have laws to address those issues). Your argument is that somehow the threat of this irrational minority is sufficient reason to deprive the majority who do not abuse the 2nd amendment. The stats don't even back up the idea that gun control would matter (Source: Department of Justice):
What's more interesting is the way those weapons used in crimes were obtained:
In the report they were lumping the Retail, Pawn, Flea, and Gun show numbers together as one source (legitimate) and the Friends/Family & Street/Illegal together as another (illegitimate). The retail purchases of these criminals dropped from the last report which was 20.8% indicating that the folks who were stilling getting their weapon from a legitimate source started getting smarter and ~40% of them had found "an alternative acquisition methodology". These numbers get even worse for repeat offenders who are more likely to acquire the weapon through illegitimate means (only 11% purchase from legit retail). Furthermore the data shows that when it comes to conventional semi-auto weapons only 16.5% are actually purchased through legitimate retail vendors. These numbers very clearly indicate that taking away legal gun owners guns or prohobitively limiting their access to them would do very little to curb violent gun crimes because violent gun crimes are performed in the vast majority of cases with weapons that were never pruchased via a legitimate source. Unless the more recent numbers show a dramatic reversal of these trends it looks like the problem is the illegal guns and further laws would have very little impact on the people it is intended to impact while having a large impact on the law abiding citizens. |
This is what I've been saying. The vast majority of people out there are responsible enough to own a gun and be safe with it. When people think about guns they think about those rare, isolated events when people get shot and tend to think about the dangerous aspect of guns.
