Hello... Moderate Gun Owners. Where ARE You?

[SecularMotion]

I used to own two guns like these when I was younger. I know how gun owners feel about their guns because I've known a lot of them, and most have been rational, educated and caring people, many with school-aged kids. So, why haven't these gun owners been moved enough by the killings of school children to join efforts to stop the carnage?

Ultra right-wing gun owners who toe the NRA party line will take no action to stop the shootings, yet we keep expecting they'll eventually come around and become sensible. Each time there is a school shooting, the NRA circles their wagons and prepares their routine second amendment press materials to respond to the outrage. What they're saying, and not so indirectly, is that these deaths are the unfortunate cost of doing business for an America that must defend itself, that their guns have an important role in keeping citizens safe.

The reality is that gun lovers just love playing with their guns and see the killings as something that doesn't involve them. Guns are their recreation, their hobby, and they're not killing anyone. The NRA is simply the defender of the toys, not the nation.

Some of what hardliners say is true. Guns in and of themselves don't kill and the majority of gun owners would never kill anyone, just as cars don't kill people, drunks do. But guns are involved in these school shootings just as automobiles are when a drunk driver mows down a sidewalk full of people. The difference is that there are rules about drunks driving cars to keep Americans safer, but there are few rules regulating guns thanks to the NRA's hard-line policy of "give em an inch and they'll take a mile." Tough luck about those kids...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-gude/hellomoderate-gun-owners-_b_8235474.html

[ileus]

1. We're tried to get better security at schools, but the PTB wouldn't rather have stats.

The more school shootings the better the donations to their agenda groups, like bloomies mommies.


They bitch and whine "Ohhhhh it's to expensive." or "Our schools shouldn't have SRO's it makes for an oppressive learning enviroment let's ban guns instead!"

They can't understand why their cute little no guns signs aren't working...."Well maybe the print was too small"




"few rules regulating guns"....someone needs to talk to someone about their NRAphobia, and read a few of the thousands of rules on the books instead. Something tells me this writer is a "gunshow loophole" true believer.

"It's those automatic killer clips! I tell ya!"

[needledriver]

2. Hello, moderate gun controllers, where are you?

No, really. What would a moderate gun controller be? You have to figure he would be somewhere on a sliding scale between complete, unfettered access to and possession of all kinds of firearms and a total and complete ban on all firearms including the police and military.

So where does moderate fall on that scale?

Here's what I figure moderate gun owners support.

Most moderate gun owners agree on the need for a process that prevents people who are legally barred from keeping and bearing firearms from gaining access to them.

Most moderate gun owners agree on a requirement for enhanced training and certification for civilians to carry concealed firearms.

Most moderate gun owners agree on the need for firearms safety training, safe handling, and secure storage.

What more do moderate gun controllers want?

[excringency]

3. It depends on who defines moderate.

I hold a current concealed carry license and I carry a gun where and when it is legal to do so. Oddly enough I find that when I do carry I am non-confrontational and don't even curse in traffic. I own three pistols and one shotgun. I would also be quite happy to comply with the following.

1. Require all gun owners to obtain a state issued license for firearm OWNERSHIP that requires extensive background checks including fingerprinting, safety training, and rigid testing.
2. Require the purchase of gun ownership liability insurance.
3. Require the registration of all handguns.
4. Require the registration of all long guns with a capacity of five rounds or more (leaving out most hunting rifles and shotguns).
5. Make private sales of firearms require background checks and appropriate registration.
6. Make it a federal offense to make an unreported and unregulated sale or purchase of a firearm of any type.

While few gun owners would be considered potential mass shooter risks, handguns and larger capacity long guns all have the potential to be used in mass shootings. More regulation and control is necessary. The points I've made do not infringe upon my rights under the second amendment, I can still own all of the firearms my heart might desire. I would remind those who might object of the first three words of the second amendment "A well regulated." I have to produce photo identification to vote in my state. I have to purchase a license to marry. I must possess a license to operate a state inspected and registered car while maintaining liability insurance. I have to get a sonogram/ultrasound and pregnancy options counseling if I wish to have an abortion, and I have to return to the same clinic later to have it performed. The nearest clinic to where I live is a six hour drive away. Voting, marriage, owning and operating a car, and getting an abortion are all legal rights I have as an American and yet I have to jump through various regulated legal hoops to exercise any of those rights. I in no way believe the right to own a firearm is somehow sacrosanct and should not be above the government's concern for the common good or general welfare.

Do any of these positions make me a moderate with regard to gun control? I don't know, but I know that to the NRA side of the argument any of my six points make me a gun confiscating freedom hating tyrant. To the opposite extreme I am still a overcompensating blood thirsty savage who bears responsibility for all of the firearm related deaths in this country. Maybe I am a little of both and maybe that makes me a moderate.

[Duckhunter935]

4. No you are not moderate

You own firearms and are so scared you must carry one around hoping to shoot someone.



I will put sarcasm on but to many controllers here what I said is true to them.

[excringency]

6. Actually

the thought of shooting someone has me reconsidering the whole issue. In my lifetime I've been threatened many times, stabbed once, and shot at twice. While that might not justify a decision to carry for many, you have a point about fear or being scared. I think for many of us, the fear comes from the thought of a lack of control in a given situation. As for the idea that I am hoping to shoot someone, that is quite a leap on your part. After some contemplation I accept your point that I am not a moderate, at least among the DU faithful.

[Duckhunter935]

7. You saw that was sarcasm right?

[excringency]

8. Yeah,

I saw the sarcasm sign. I just got to thinking about what you said literally as I'm sure some feel that way without the sarcasm. So I guess that was for them and not you.

[Straw Man]

11. Yes, and that's the crux of it.

It depends on who defines moderate.

I too consider myself a moderate. I live in New York, which already has most of what you describe. (We don't have an insurance requirement, and long guns are only registered if they are "assault weapons," meaning with a detachable magazine and any one "military feature," including flash hiders and adjustable stocks.)

When the last big gun control package, the SAFE Act, passed in 2013, gun controllers in the state legislature proclaimed from the floor that "this is just the beginning," and that "there's a lot more to come." In the face of this, who wouldn't believe in the slippery slope? That belief leads to hardline resistance against any "reasonable" proposals. Like clockwork, every year new bills come to the legislature for more limits on firearm ownership. It would be naive to think that it will ever end.

And here's why it will never end: none of the laws will have a significant impact on spree killings or even the more pressing problems of suicide and random criminal violence. There are just too many ways for the perpetrators to achieve their aims. So as the social fabric stretches to the breaking point, more and more useless measures will be enacted, until firearms are virtually banned.

I've said it before: it astounds me that no one seems to be concerned about why someone would want to slaughter a large number of random strangers. Such incidents are symptoms of a very sick society. Gun owners and the NRA are convenient scapegoats for those who want an easy answer and a bogeyman to hate, but they aren't the source of the problem.

In the current climate, it's practically impossible to be a moderate.

[Snobblevitch]

15. Every single pump action and semi-auto shotgun

holds at least five rounds. My father's Model 94 .32Winchester lever-action hunting rifle (made in 1904) holds 11 rounds. Almost every bolt-action hunting rifle I can think of holds five rounds. Your number 4. idea does not work for me.

[beevul]

5. Verbal slight of hand.

The difference is that there are rules about drunks driving cars to keep Americans safer, but there are few rules regulating guns thanks to the NRA's hard-line policy of "give em an inch and they'll take a mile."

Deliberate or inadvertent verbal slight of hand.

There are rules about drunks driving cars in public.

There are just as many if not more rules about carrying and/or using a gun in public.

The author either doesn't realize it his/her self that they're comparing public use (of a car) with private ownership (of guns), or knows it and hopes nobody notices.

Unfortunately this is not new, we see the same sort of rhetorical gymnastics and muddled thinking (and support for it) far too often.


"Moderate".

[sarisataka]

9. Since the article mentioned

All these rules about drunk driving...
If you kill a person while DUI, you do some time, get out, take a test and get to drive again.

If you shoot someone while drunk, you do a lot of time and never get to own a gun again.

[krispos42]

10. I don't see anybody out there proposing things like fuel-tank limits for cars...

...to make the tiny handful used in drunk-driving collisions or as escape vehicles easier to catch. Or proposing making the seats uncomfortable and difficult to adjust because we don't want escaping felons to have an easy time of driving away from the cops.



There is a denial of vulnerability that exists here. We, as a people, are routinely in geographical situations where we are horribly, horribly vulnerable to death or injury in the event of a random homicide event, whether it be a shooter, a stabber, or a guy with a bomb. Avenues of escape can be limited even to the fleet-of-foot; the disabled due to injury, illness, or age are even more vulnerable. Police response is an average of several minutes away. Despite the clutching of pearls of some, there is unlikely to be a person carrying concealed in the immediate vicinity. And a person carrying concealed who is perhaps in the area but outside of the immediate vicinity is likely to run away as well; they carry for PERSONAL protection. One side in this argument both mocks CCWers for having Rambo mentalities AND for not running into danger.


So what efforts can (again) be proposed to stop the carnage? The guy had a rifle and several pistols; assuming that rifle was an AR-type rifle and had been banned and confiscated, how would that have lowered the body count when a) there were several pistols available and b) other rifles and shotguns could have been substituted?

What effect would a magazine limit have when the shooter has several guns and a generally helpless, trapped population of victims?

The perp bought the guns legally, so background checks were in effect.


There exists no hardware-based solution for this situation. None. Unless you're going to try to knock the clock back to 1850. If he had burst in there with a lever-action rifle and a trio of six-shooters, we'd have just as many dead people. Ten rounds of .44 Mag in the rifle, and 18 rounds in the handguns. All before reloading. That's plenty of kill 9 people trapped in a classroom.

[Eleanors38]

12. Message for elitist controllers: Don't get others to carry your slop bucket.

If you can't get out of bed before 10:00 a.m., if you can't contribute money, if you can't go door-to-door, if you can't hold a meeting after work, if you can't do what is necessary to clean yourself after the morning constitutional, don't smugly ask others to do your dirty work, while you still bellow for "just the first step" in controls and bans.

What an arrogant, lazy twit.

[sarisataka]

13. Right in front of you

You know, we're the folks you are calling gun humpers, ammosexuals and pre-criminals.

When we speak you tell us to stop repeating NRA talking points.

While you dream of a world filled with dancing unicorns, we are getting effective laws passed, such as removing guns from DV offenders.

So far it has done us no good to try to work with gun control because the first time we question the least facet of a gun control proposal we are back to being ammosexuals who want no restrictions on guns at all.

[beevul]

14. Moderate...

The OP means 'moderate' in relation to that posters wants and desires legislatively, rather than 'moderate' on an objective scale.

On an objective scale, what that poster deems as 'moderate' is far from it.

[branford]

16. Gun humpers, ammosexuals, pre-criminals, AND heartless child killers.

Never forget the "child killers."

That's the one that always puts me right in an accommodating and compromising frame of mind...