I wonder with the recent shooting in Tuscon will these bill to be meet so hard times in becoming law? I love guns and shooting for pleasure and would like to take up hunting for boar and turkey for hobby in the near future but, I dont have a need to sling on my 6 shooter and walk down the street. The time of tumble weeds and horse drawn carriages are gone, the need for a weapon is now purely hooby intent.Here was the reply I sent to him:
The shooting in AZ appears as if it will have very little effect, as most Americans realize that the shooter was a mentally unbalanced drug abuser, and was already prohibited from owning a firearm. This shooting is a statistical aberration, and is not an indictment of all gun owners. It is unlikely to have a great effect on this legislation. The shooter in the recent AZ case is the exact reason why I (and many others) carry a weapon, because no matter how many restrictions you put on gun ownership, criminals will ignore those laws and get guns anyway. In the case of SB234, the question is not whether or not citizens should own or carry firearms, as that has already been settled in Florida, but whether or not a citizen who is already permitted to carry a weapon concealed may also carry that same weapon unconcealed.
I disagree with your assertion that the ownership of firearms is restricted to being a hobby. There are those who could just as likely claim that in this time of easy food availabilty there is no need to go into the woods and blow away defenseless animals. Firearms are a tool, no more, no less. The fact is that private citizens use firearms to defend themselves millions of times a year, many times without firing a shot. I am not alone in this opinion, as even the Supreme Court of the United States is in agreement (see District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S.; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008)) "The Court concluded that the prefatory clause [of the second amendment] described the purpose of codifying the [second] Amendment, which was "to prevent elimination of the militia" by taking away citizens' arms. Self-defense, however, remained the "central component" of the [second] Amendment."
The canard of the "wild west" is a fallacy that was brought about by fantasy fiction. The "wild west" was much tamer that today, and shootings were almost unheard of. Cities and towns in the west frequently went years without a single shooting. Even the infamous "OK Corral" shootout scandalized and shocked America when it was reported.
Using vitriolic rhetoric is not a way to make a logical argument. Using terms like "sling on my six shooter" and "tumble weeds and horse drawn carriages" does not advance the debate, nor does it bolster your argument. If you would like to talk about this based on facts, and not emotion, I would be happy to debate facts with you.
One minor quibble. Loughner was not a prohibited person under federal law because he had neither been adjudicated mentally ill, nor convicted of a disqualifying crime. That said, even if here WERE a prohibited person, there is no doubt in my mind that he could have easily acquired a firearm of any type. After all, the gun ban folks tell us that it's absurdly easy for anyone to get any kind of firearm because we have so few (20,000) gun control laws on the books.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the weapon used, it's the person using it that is the problem. Loughner probably should have been prohibited but it appears that the medical and criminal justice systems failed. I also have to wonder what the outcry would have been if he had used a bomb or a car instead of a firearm.
Actually, he was. He was, according to all accounts, addicted to illegal drugs, which is a disqualifier. That would also mean that he lied on the 4473 to purchase the firearm, another crime.
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