Quote:But even if you outlaw guns and then confiscate them without incident how does that stop things like this from happening

A "lone wolf" with ties to a major terrorist organization that's motivated enough to make it happen will probably find a way to do so. That's just a reality of the situation.

 

Outlawing guns isn't the answer either. Americans have a right to own them, and while I don't know the exact numbers, it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of people who buy guns are not intending to use them to harm other human beings. My thoughts get convoluted from there, with restrictions on the types of weapons allowed, magazine size, ammunition stored, outlawing of weapons that fire repeatedly with a single pull of the trigger, licensing of all gun owners and registration of all guns, and additional background checks that go above and beyond criminal history to include association with known criminals, social media history, immigration status and country of origin (yes, profiling), etc. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that gun owners give up a little bit of their privacy so that the government can make sure it isn't about to award a .30-06 rifle or a 12-gauge shotgun to someone who runs a white power blog or an ISIS-sympathetic Twitter.

 

The second part would be making it a felony to possess an unregistered gun, an illegal/illegally modified gun or a gun not registered to you without the owner present. I will never support warrantless searches of persons or property, nor will I ever support suspicionless stops to search a person for concealed firearms (or for any reason, actually), but open carry should be reason enough for an officer to stop you, ask to see your firearm and your license, then cross-check that gun to your name in the registry and make sure that it's yours and it's legal before sending you on your way.

 

I will never support seizure of weapons without cause. What is cause? Evidence that the person possessing the gun is a clear and present danger to those around them would be one. An illegal weapon or a weapon modified to be made illegal is another. Possessing someone else's gun or an unregistered weapon would be a third. There aren't a ton of circumstance that would fall into this category, and that's by design. It goes without saying that any legislation like this that goes into effect would absolutely have to be accompanied by legislation guaranteeing that a gun registry will be used solely to track, not to confiscate. That might even require a Constitutional amendment to guarantee. Under no circumstances should legislation designed to make it harder for the bad guys to get or keep guns be allowed to open a back door for the Nancy Pelosis (Pelosii?) of the world to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens.

 

Like I said, I know I'll drive some here crazy and up a wall with that answer, but it really is the best I've got. Good news I'm not a lawmaker then, huh? "Do nothing because the system wouldn't have prevented this anyway," loses its sincerity after a while. If the system wouldn't have prevented the murder of five members of the US Military, or nine churchgoers, or twenty-something kids or twelve people in a movie theater, do we continue to sit around with our thumbs up our butts insisting that additional legislation isn't the answer because the legislation we have isn't working anyway? Or is it time to make it easier to catch the bad guys and lock them away, thus preventing them from making the attacks in the first place?

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