(02-14-2018, 09:42 PM)JagNGeorgia Wrote:

(02-14-2018, 09:02 PM)TJBender Wrote: The gun lobby and the Republicans they pay for. Every damn time. They're as quick to say, "This is a mental health issue," as those same Republicans were to kick everyone out of the hospitals in the '80s. 

I mean, at some point, pull your heads out of your [BLEEP]. This is now a weekly thing, maybe even twice in some weeks. How do we even define a "mass" shooting anymore? What's the head count up to before it's not just "some loon with a gun"? Does the location of the shooting play into it? Like, if someone shoots 4 kids at a school, is it a mass shooting whereas 4 adults at an office is just a job dispute gone horribly awry?

[BLEEP] it. Amend the Constitution. Americans can't handle guns, and to the group that's inevitably salivating over the chance to reply, yeah, that's aimed at you too. If we can't go one week without someone shooting up a concert or a school or a mall or a workplace or a church or town square, it's no longer a mental health issue. It's not a terrorism issue, and it's not an illegal immigration issue so don't you even try to go there, scumbag. It's a gun issue. Specifically, Americans don't know how to use them responsibly. Amend the [BLEEP] Constitution. Don't take them away, but codify the right to own them. And if your response is they can have it when they pry it from your cold dead hands, then, hey, you made your own bed on that one.

Guns should be registered. Ownership should be tightly controlled. Possession of a gun by a person other than the registered owner is a felony. An individual's license to own a gun may be revoked upon showing of cause, and no cause is needed to deny a license to own a firearm in the first place. You want to own a gun? Fine. Your criminal record, medical history and background check results are now public record. And if you or a dependent of yours use a gun in the commission of a crime, that gun is seized and destroyed along with any and all others you own, and you go to jail for a long, long time. Zero tolerance for gun violence.

You want to own a gun? Fine. Prove that you're a responsible, stable individual who should have one first, and keep proving that every damn day until you die or lose it. Amend the Constitution, because that's the only way it can legally be done, but Charlie H. Crist, how can anyone sit there and continue to argue that lax gun laws (if they exist at all) are not allowing these guns to make it to people who then use them to murder others?

"What's the point of more laws if more laws don't work?"

Stop dodging. You have no counter to the real point, so you hide behind a lawyer argument. More laws work wonders if you enforce the ones already on the books and the new ones.

A couple problems I see with your solutions:

1. If someone were to see another person get shot, pick up the weapon of the deceased victim (assuming they have a gun), and shot the offender then he would be charged with a felony in your scenario. What about the owner's wife who is home alone with her husband's gun? What about the 12-year-old girl that uses her dad's gun? Where do you stop prohibiting someone from using another person's weapon because it isn't their's?

2. Millions of Americans use their guns responsibly. The actions of a few don't somehow negate that.

3. What is considered responsible? Who determines they're responsible, and how often do these considerations change?

Your solutions seem reasonable until held against scrutiny. We have a mental health issue, not a gun control issue. 

How would more laws have stopped the mass shooter in Parkland?

We do have a mental health issue. Good thing Reagan had the foresight to kick all the loonies out of the hospitals, right? For a guy who did such a great job as President, that's his biggest misstep.

Reasonable exceptions, like someone picking up a deceased police officer's gun to shoot the person that shot the officer, are understood, as is the notion that a registration would extend to immediate family. Of course, a 12-year-old using her dad's gun would get both of them sent to jail for a long time. My thoughts are not meant to be an exercise in finding excuses. They're meant to be a solution with teeth that, if enforced, leaves ownership of guns alone because, frankly, Americans do have the right to guns, and I support the Second Amendment believe it or not. The problem is that the laws we have aren't enforced, and they apparently aren't enough of a deterrent to keep "responsible" gun owners and dealers from irresponsibly letting firearms get into the hands of those who shouldn't have them. You want to bear arms? Cool. Be ready to surrender other rights to gain that one.

How would more laws have stopped the shooter in Parkland? Remains to be seen, but I promise you that if the person he got/stole/bought that AR-15 from were sent to prison for 25 to life for negligent homicide and accessory to first degree murder, it would make others think twice about how they secure the guns registered in their name or who they give/sell the guns registered in their name to.

Guns are like drugs in that regard. Punishing the end user accomplishes little to stop the problem. It's when you move up the chain and start getting the people who are supplying the end user that you start to make an impact, only it's magnified here because it's not just drug dealers you're putting the fear of God into. If Bill down the street goes to jail for six months because his kid took the family pistol out from the master bedroom and robbed a Stab-N-Go, I bet you anything that everyone else on that block is thinking long and hard about the way they secure their own firearm.

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