I think it's baby steps for The Lizard
He's just getting his foot in the door
More and more later

All the executive orders in the world aren't going to solve the problem. You can't legislate against crazy. Especially crazies with religion.
Here's the Artie Plan:
First, we eliminate the real estate tax exemption on religious facilities. To paraphrase the Mayor in Animal House: You want to have your house of worship, you have to pay. 
No problem for the Vatican and your neighborhood synagogue, but that knocks out of the box all the quasi-religious wackos like the Westboro Baptists and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (look it up!) and the Dianic Wiccans and the Tin Foil Helmetists. 
The government takes by tax title the facilities of these now-defunct fringe religions and converts them to prisons. Then we fill them up with people possessing guns, which is now an illegal act for EVERYONE. First offense, you get one year in prison. Second offense, you get two years in prison. Third offense, three years, etc. No judicial discretion. No get out of jail free cards. No passing Go and collecting $200.
And how do we pay for the maintenance of these new prisons? With the tax money we've collected from the religious institutions that can afford to pay.
Brilliance, eh?

Last edited by artie_fufkin (1/06/2016 2:24 pm)

Well I'll be diplomatic as I can be in this. I grew up around guns, as clearly outlined in the current fiasco, Oregon has some pretty light gun laws. My father probably shot off (by his guess) a million rounds in his life. 

We shot at clay pigeons, deer, raccoon, squirrels, rabbits, grouse, cans, matchbook covers, and in a few cases for my dad, other people. These times were in self defense, and very few, but 3 times that I know of, my father had to shoot at another human being. Had he not done so on one occurrence, him and my mother would have been murdered while I was still in the womb. 

Coming up in that world, I don't believe owning a gun should be illegal. I don't believe carrying one (concealed or not) in public should be illegal. For every argument that calls for us to outlaw firearms, I can simply say that all of these tragedies would be limited 10000% in scope if everyone was armed. 

Now, that being said, I'm actually very comfortable with Illinois gun laws. It's as AP said. You have to be a registered owner, and there are checks and some waiting periods. You really want a gun if you buy one in Illinois, and that's how it should be. Like Artie mentioned, you cannot legislate crazy. There's no way to take preventative action against this without outlawing guns outright, or making them damned hard to get. Unless you want to lock up everyone who doesn't pass a mental evaluation on the grounds that they MIGHT do something wrong. 

However outlawing guns outright will result in two very unacceptable outcomes to me. 
1) Only law abiding citizens (the least worrying group in the entire 300 million population) will turn in their guns. Radicals, Crazies, Criminals will go ahead and keep theirs in case they need it. 
2) Now anyone wanting to commit a criminal act against another person or their property can do so with a pretty fair certainty that the person is unarmed and unable to defend themselves. 

Instead, I would encourage every American to arm. Teach your children about firearms, and being responsible with them, but be armed as much as you can. For some insight as to where this goes? 

http://www.snopes.com/crime/dumdum/gunshop.asp

True story.

I haven't read up on Trump's stance on guns, but I cannot imagine he's for gun control. It just doesn't feel like he's on that side of the issue. However he's part of the North East.

That's a funny place though. 8 of the top 10 more densely populated states (people per square mile) are in the northeast, and with that much human traffic, I imagine the world is quite different than it is in the other 85% of the US land mass, 25 states (including texas and alaska) have less than 100 people for every square mile. Huge states like Wyoming and Montana have 6 and 7 people per square mile....

Quite simply, in the northeast it's hard to imagine a world where 500,000 of your closest friends aren't ready to stop the injustice and within shouting distance... I would imagine that puts a different tilt on "solutions". A rape whistle might be an acceptable alternative to a firearm in the northeast....

In Oregon however, you leave your sparsely populated (10K people) town, and it can be 100 miles to the next one over. 

APIAD wrote:

So you want to repeal the second amendment?

 
I think it needs to be removed, or at least re-written. The Bill of Rights was written in 18th century parameters. The FFs couldn't have foreseen automatic weapons. And the gun advocates almost always seem to leave out the part about the "well-regulated militia," which going by the circumstances at the time would indicate the framers almost certainly were referring to private citizens bearing arms in support of the regular armed forces against the British military.
It's a bit of a stretch to interpret the second amendment as the FFs giving the citizenry carte blanche to bear arms as a check and balance of the government that they had just formed. The framers didn't even give ordinary citizens the right to vote initially. Why in the world would they include - as their second thought after freedom of speech, et al, the right of the great unwashed to bear arms?

Last edited by artie_fufkin (1/06/2016 11:09 pm)

artie_fufkin wrote:

APIAD wrote:

So you want to repeal the second amendment?

 
I think it needs to be removed, or at least re-written. The Bill of Rights was written in 18th century parameters. The FFs couldn't have foreseen automatic weapons. And the gun advocates almost always seem to leave out the part about the "well-regulated militia," which going by the circumstances at the time would indicate the framers almost certainly were referring to private citizens bearing arms in support of the regular armed forces against the British military.
It's a bit of a stretch to interpret the second amendment as the FFs giving the citizenry carte blanche to bear arms as a check and balance of the government that they had just formed. The framers didn't even give ordinary citizens the right to vote initially. Why in the world would they include - as their second thought after freedom of speech, et al, the right of the great unwashed to bear arms?

We've had this discussion before. If there had been gun control in the 1770's, we'd still be speaking with a British accent and drinking tea.

Given that the unwashed masses had just fought a war against tyrannical power using mostly privately owned guns, I think the idea of gun ownership as a means to overthrow the government was exactly what they intended. And it was certainly worthy of being their 2nd thought--especially since their 3rd thought was to prohibit the government from housing soldiers in their private homes.

I don't have an issue with background checks.  I'm not a big fan of presidents (from either party) using executive orders to make laws that can't otherwise make it through Congress.

The irony is, Obama is the best thing that ever happened to the gun industry. I read somewhere that gun company stocks were up nearly 10% after Obama's EO's were signed. I wish I had been smart enough to anticipate it 7 years ago.

"The irony is, Obama is the best thing that ever happened to the gun industry."

On this we agree. 

Gotcha.

I'm not opposed to mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes.  In fact, I think mandatory minimums for gun crimes make a lot more sense than mandatory minimums in a lot of other areas (drugs, stealing, etc...)

APIAD wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

Gotcha.

I'm not opposed to mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes.  In fact, I think mandatory minimums for gun crimes make a lot more sense than mandatory minimums in a lot of other areas (drugs, stealing, etc...)

 

In illinois feloy probation is about the norm for sentences. Nobody goes to prison. Never first time offenders.

That's what ended up happening. In most instances, the felony "illegal carrying" charge was dropped in lieu of a misdemeanor "illegal possession" charge, which gave the judges discretionary power. And I looked it up. The law is still on the books here. So almost no one gets charged with illegal carrying. Typical Massachusetts. Pass a law and don't enforce it.
 

artie_fufkin wrote:

APIAD wrote:

So you want to repeal the second amendment?

 
I think it needs to be removed, or at least re-written. The Bill of Rights was written in 18th century parameters. The FFs couldn't have foreseen automatic weapons. And the gun advocates almost always seem to leave out the part about the "well-regulated militia," which going by the circumstances at the time would indicate the framers almost certainly were referring to private citizens bearing arms in support of the regular armed forces against the British military.
It's a bit of a stretch to interpret the second amendment as the FFs giving the citizenry carte blanche to bear arms as a check and balance of the government that they had just formed. The framers didn't even give ordinary citizens the right to vote initially. Why in the world would they include - as their second thought after freedom of speech, et al, the right of the great unwashed to bear arms?

I could make this exact "rewrite" argument on nearly every one of the bill of rights.

Freedom of speech and assembly? Sorry but the Westboro Baptist Church gives me seriously good reason to want that re-written.

Right to bear arms? Unfortunately there are a ton of mass shootings that make a lot of Americans want to take action against firearms. 

Free Press? I apologize if this offends Artie, but after watching the media attempting to turn every officer shooting into a full on race war for the last 18 months, I think there needs to be some serious checks to enforce responsible journalism. 

Fors said two things I agree with.... One is the President treating the Executive Order option as a blank checkbook. That's not what the power is there for. The other? The single biggest thing Obama could have done to DRIVE gun sales through the roof is to whip out his pen and start crying on television. Half of America was like, "Oh shit, I better buy one before he fucks that up too"....