Banning Guns: What Difference Would It Make?

Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related.

...Anti-freedom advocates claim to know what is best for the individual, they like to play God.

I don't normally walk around packing heat. The one place I normally ever go where I'd like to on general principles is the one place where the consequences of getting caught doing it would be the most horrific i.e. Baltimore Md.

H2O MAN wrote:

...Anti-freedom advocates claim to know what is best for the individual, they like to play God.

Pro gun advocates also claim to know what is best for the individual.

Foofie wrote:

H2O MAN wrote:

...Anti-freedom advocates claim to know what is best for the individual, they like to play God.

Pro gun advocates also claim to know what is best for the individual.

Pro individual rights advocates look to the Constitution for guidance, the Anti crowd ignores the US Constitution.

If you are alluding to the Second Amendment

Berry said he doesn't support any restrictions on assault-style weapons.

"The truth of the matter is that banning the object for the actions of the person to me is absolutely ridiculous,"

Berry says he doesn't support any kind of restriction on clips either. Bottom line for the six-time elected sheriff: the Constitution.

"You don't pick and choose, you either support the Constitution or you don't," said Berry.

Men with tasers have small penises. Men with GUNS however... well ok, they still have small penises, but with a nice BIG gun they can forget about their small penis for a while.

Gun advocates often claim that guns do not kill people; people kill people. However, I wonder how many gun advocates took algebra with the lesson on Venn diagrams, where the two circles intersecting show where two separate criteria are applicable. Meaning: guns do not kill people; people with guns kill people. The fact that people can kill people with another mode of killing does not negate that fact that in the hands of a person, a gun can be used for killing (at least until animals learn how to use a gun).

Anyway, banning guns would, if I understand your post, possibly make us ripe for invasion by a foreign power that was not concerned about the military prowess of our armed forces, and would only be concerned with the straight shooting prowess of private citizens.

Plus, self-defense situations would not have the benefit of an old western style quick draw shoot out (especially in "stand your ground" states).

And, during hard times, folks would have to put out animal traps for food, rather than have the fun experience of shooting their dinner.

Banning guns would also eliminate the many gun accidents at home,

or the inebriated person deciding to do target practice not far from other civilians, who might be somewhere behind the target.

Banning guns would also eliminate the possibility of future vigilante style justice when there was some situation that totally offends the sensibilities of some group of people.

All in all, banning guns would force many people to try very hard to believe that civilized behavior needs to be the operating principal of society.

It could eliminate a lot of "joy in Mudville," to quote a poem about baseball.

Oh yes, banning guns would make the lives of spouse, children and families of law enforcement officers much less stressful, since today they never know when the law enforcement officer could be shot while on duty. Now naturally, the bad guys have guns; however, banning guns could include all sorts of creative ways to take guns out of circulation, so the bad guys would not only have fewer guns, but many bad guys could not afford the inflated prices of guns on any "gun black market." In effect, banning and eliminating guns, from civil society will be like eliminating a disease with vaccines; it takes years until the disease is conquered (i.e., smallpox).

amandanyc17 wrote:

...There's just this argument that once you outlaw the guns, the real outlaws will have more access to guns.

I do not believe that, since once guns would be outlawed, only a black market would exist for guns, and the cost of a gun would be inflated to the point where only the very wealthy criminal could afford a black market gun. The rest of us would not have to worry about the crazies with guns, since crazies are usually not able to afford inflated prices. Finally, inflation would have a good benefit.

The third and most critical section was Appendix A, which listed every single hunting rifle and shotgun in use at the time — there were hundreds — that didn’t run afoul of the features test in the second component. Those firearms were unequivocally exempted from the bill.

At the time, gun-control advocates resisted the incorporation of Appendix A. But the idea behind it was and remains crucial to making any meaningful changes in America’s gun laws. They must gain the support of gun owners, most of whom are heartsick over senseless carnage.

By explicitly protecting hundreds of popular sporting guns, the bill enabled senators and representatives to push back against the tide of protests — many of them generated by the National Rifle Association — at town hall-style meetings in their states and districts. They could show their constituents that their ordinary hunting rifles and shotguns were protected in Appendix A or that their guns could be added to it, if need be. Proponents of the legislation distributed blue booklets describing all three parts of the bill, including pictures of the assault weapons banned by name and the full list of guns protected by Appendix A.

The nation’s principal law enforcement organizations, whose leaders testified and lobbied aggressively for the bill, also made great use of the booklets and Appendix A. In fact, it was a survey showing overwhelming support for an assault-weapons ban from police chiefs in and around his Congressional district that persuaded Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee at the time, to support the bill. His surprise yes vote offset the no vote of the committee’s conservative chairman, Representative Jack Brooks, a Texas Democrat, so that the bill could move to the floor of the House.

The existence of Appendix A also made it possible for Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Democrat and longtime N.R.A. member — coupled with his own reaction to a torrent of gun-lobby phone calls — to commit to supporting Senator Feinstein’s bill if it was essential. That moment came when a motion to table, or effectively kill, the bill came before the Senate. Although the motion would have failed with a tie vote of 50 to 50, Senator Feinstein asked Senator Campbell for his vote to show that a majority of senators supported the bill. He honored his commitment, and the motion to table failed, 49 to 51, paving the way for the ultimate passage of the bill by a vote of 57 to 43.

The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.

Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims.

P.S.: If you are in NYC, and being a good guy you are "packing heat," based on the anti-gun laws there, you just don't belong in NYC, in my opinion, whether or not you would "get caught." Like a fart in church, or a ham sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah. Get it?

If you are alluding to the Second Amendment, then you need a militia to join, since the Second Amendment talks about the right to bear arms, IN CONTEXT OF BEING IN A MILITIA.

rosborne979 wrote:

Men with tasers have small penises. Men with GUNS however... well ok, they still have small penises, but with a nice BIG gun they can forget about their small penis for a while.

What is it with Freedom Haters and childish name-calling???

You are overlooking the fact that it is extremely easy to manufacture firearms covertly.

Banning guns would only result in criminals going into the gun making business.

It would also likely result in a big step up in lethality, as such covert manufacturers would not bother making handguns. They'd be making sawed-off double-barrel shotguns.

Going into the arms business then, leaves one with inferior weaponry....