In context, what I meant is that people think that the shootings Orlando and San Bernardino are part of a problem separate from events in Newtown and Aurora. I think they are all a symptom of the same problem.
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I don't think a simple, blanket ammo tax would itself solve the problem. A person who owns a gun for self defense and logically only needs a few bullets in their lifetime is obviously in a different situation than a hunter or sport shooter.
My logic is that since there are too many guns to ver confiscate, and no real willingness amongst the public to do that anyway, another avenue to making gun crime difficult must be found, one that does not offend the spirit of the 2nd Amendment. Since the business part of a gun is actually the bullet, maybe thatare the feature we should be regulating better. After all, the vast majority of people will not manufacture their own bullets.
1). Make a choice between having freedoms or not having freedoms. Having freedoms will always come at some cost to society. If we allow people to drink alcohol, then eventually some people will get in their cars and drive drunk, regardless of the law.
2). Nearly EVERY SINGLE mass shooting has occurred in a gun free zone. Often times, these zones prohibit off-duty police officers from carrying their weapon in that area. For example, in Florida, I believe that no one is allowed to carry a gun in a bar, even if they are not drinking. The good guys obey the law and don't bring guns. The bad guys don't obey the law. Laws that target good guys are essentially irrelevant.
3). Change the culture related to dealing with violence. Both of my grandfathers were raised in different parts of the US (one in Ohio, one in Iowa and then Minnesota). Neither came from similar backgrounds, but both would have attacked the guy with the gun, even as an unarmed 80 year old. Why? Because there is a lower chance of surviving by hiding. (Running away IS a valid option, though. Don't think that I have some boner to fight people.) Most people who crouched down in the nightclub were shot. There are no reports of anyone attacking the shooter. I recently went to a symposium at a local college where the new tactic being taught to teachers for dealing with a mass shooting is to have everyone hide next to the door and have everyone jump the shooter at once when he comes in the door. This way, only one, two, or maybe no people get shot, rather than a whole classroom. We need to change the culture and show people that if they can't run away, they need to fight back. Even if they don't know how to fight, the simple decision to do something might save their life.
4). Enforce pre-existing laws. Many of these shooting would be prevented if laws related to psychiatric reporting or immigration were actually enforced.
5). Recognize that motives rather than tools are the issue. Every mass shooting in my lifetime that has been at the forefront of the gun-ban discussion has been perpetrated by either someone with a severe mental illness or a devout duty to Islam. We have chosen not to lock up everyone that is mentally ill anymore, and we have chosen to try to keep targets of the backs of Muslims. This prevents hate crimes, but allows a few bad eggs to slip through the cracks. This goes back to step 1: freedom. Freedom always comes at a cost. And the cost of not blaming every Muslim or everyone with a mental illness certainly seems worth it to me.
I actually don't see any problem with assimilation in our country. It is Europe, which has less of a "melting pot" philosophy, that has the assimilation problem with Muslims. Their history with that population is also different... a lot of residents from former colonies, and of course, the refugee wave of the present moment. This is not quite America's "Ellis Island" experience.
The matter at hand is not ethnicity but religion. The jihadist problem draws from the religion of Islam, which is (understandably) treated as alien by the vast majority of Americans who simply don't know how to have a polite conversation about a foreign religion without it threatening our our traditional Christian outlook. It is 9/11 and what has happened since that has forced this conversation, otherwise we would all still be in a "live and let live" mode.Quote:
We have been lectured, brow beaten, slandered, and libeled by the left and 'social justice warriors' for decades upon decades: assimilation is hegemony, racist, sexist, micro-aggression, etc...
So I repeat: what we ought to do is have an ongoing two-way conversation with mainstream American Muslims, so that the pushback on terrorism can come from them as well, instead of the press rushing to dig up a token Muslim after every tragedy so they can either A) ask why they hate us or B) ask if they are worried about their mosques being fire bombed.... and then forget about them until the next tragedy.
We all have to sleep in this bed we are making. We are a democracy, and the People are to praise or blame for the quality of our situation.Quote:
There is your bed...have fun sleeping in it.
I would encourage you to read around the rest of this website. We have nothing to hide. Most of us who choose to have a gun for self defense recognize that it would be negligent to own a gun but not know how to use it. That would be unsafe for ourselves and our family members, and potentially our neighbors.
Most of us would never shoot someone who is stealing a wallet or a tv. Let them have it and call the police. But, there are some really sick psychos out there who rape and kill people. So, what if someone's trying to rape and kill my wife, and I try to shoot them and I miss and hit my wife, or I miss and it goes next door and kills my neighbor. That wouldn't be very good.
So, most of us practice. I don't shoot competitively, and I don't hunt. I shoot for self-defense and because I enjoy going shooting. I shoot a varying amount each year, but, to keep it simple, let's average it out and say that I shoot about 20,000 rounds a year. If a tax is placed on that ammo so that I can only afford to shoot 10,000 rounds, how does that save lives? If you mean an ammo restriction, rather than ammo tax, and you think I should only be able to own 10 rounds, then how is it safe for me to own that gun in the first place if I'm going to have a dangerous, negligent knowledge of how to use it?
While this much is true, there is also the question of the abuse of freedom which has to be looked squarely in the eye. Weapons are, after all, a business. Gun makers want to sell guns and keep selling them. The more sold, the more used, and the more eventually used for crime. I think we have come to a point where the very saturation of guns is forcing a policy change.
This "good guy with a gun" theory is simply one I don't buy. I dunno... maybe I will have to see an attempted mass shooting in an open-carry state get thwarted by six vigilant citizens all shooting the killer in the head for me to see the virtue of getting rid of gun-free zones. It seems to me that most of these mass-shootings are glorified suicides, so the killers aren't worried about the effect of "a good guy with a gun" (they usually DO wind up shot dead, after all, either by cops or themselves). And frankly, it seems likely that when people all start pulling guns, they will quickly confuse each other with the killer and end up shooting one another.Quote:
2). Nearly EVERY SINGLE mass shooting has occurred in a gun free zone. Often times, these zones prohibit off-duty police officers from carrying their weapon in that area. For example, in Florida, I believe that no one is allowed to carry a gun in a bar, even if they are not drinking. The good guys obey the law and don't bring guns. The bad guys don't obey the law. Laws that target good guys are essentially irrelevant.
Fair enough, though on a mass level, this seems likely to have limited results. You can't easily change the human reaction to a panic situation, unless you start from kindergarten and implement it nationwide. But let's say we did that: the sensible public reaction to that curriculum would be:"Um, excuse me? What is going on in our nation that, rather than control guns, children must be trained from birth how to tackle a homicidal Rambo? Aren't we missing the forest for the trees here?"Quote:
3). Change the culture related to dealing with violence... I recently went to a symposium at a local college where the new tactic being taught to teachers for dealing with a mass shooting is to have everyone hide next to the door and have everyone jump the shooter at once when he comes in the door. This way, only one, two, or maybe no people get shot, rather than a whole classroom. We need to change the culture and show people that if they can't run away, they need to fight back. Even if they don't know how to fight, the simple decision to do something might save their life.
At the risk of feeding the troll...
http://crimeresearch.org/2014/09/mor...ass-shootings/