Blog Posts

OK, let's try this gun law thing another way: High-capacity magazines.

These threads on gun laws go bad fast. So I'm just going to propose one issue with each post. Please confine yourselves to one brief reply or clarification, and for the sake of keeping things neat, please try not to comment on other people's comments. So here is my first question:

Would you be in favor of:

Limiting magazine capacity to 10 and banning possession of larger-capacity magazines nationwide? (This would probably involve some kind of buyback/trade-in program.)

NRA, Gun Owners, 2nd Amendment Fans: What is your plan?

I think it's important to find out from gun proponents whether they believe that each day's gun deaths are:

1) simply an unfortunate side effect of Life In a Free Country Among Sometimes Not Very Smart People, or

2) something that the law ought to actually try harder to prevent.

De-coupling Guns and Alcohol: The path to Gun Sanity

Last night I decided that the absolute best way to lower the number of guns in the country and force safer behavior from current owners/users would be to create a nationwide rule that bars a person from touching a gun if their blood alcohol content is over .06.  I believe this would make it substantially less fun to own/use guns, lower the number of accidents and discourage irresponsible persons from the hobby.

Because as I wrote last night, "What's the point of being prepared for Armageddon if you can't get drunk and shoot varmints with your buddies in the meantime?"

 

List of Newtown Rules

 

A couple of people asked for clarification on sensible practices so I checked out some of the existing gun laws and made a list. This doesn't get into the whole permit/waiting period issue, which is confusing and different from state to state. Please comment.

The Newtown Rules: From Gunsanity to Gun Sanity

The "Newtown Rules:" I wrote to Joe Biden!

 

Vice President Joe Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20501

Dear Mr. Vice President,

NRA members! Watch out for Joe Biden!

Well, I checked and it looks as if, even after Newtown and some stores pulling the gun off the shelves, sales of the Bushmaster rifle are up. Go figure. 

Reluctantly I have to agree with DF that at least some of this is fueled by people who believe that the gun will be outlawed, and that it is counter-productive.

Another stab: Fashion and gun control

If we're talking about increasing gun safety through numbers reduction, the most effective words in the English language will be "Ewww," "So 2011," and "Jesus, what a pain in the ass."

 
Our discussion of which weapons and ammunition to ban (See "Black Rifle Blues") is fraught with inconsistencies and plagued by the reality that sometimes, making something illegal increases its appeal.
 
But MADD and the anti-tobacco folks understood that the perception of unfashionableness is among the world's most powerful forces, and used it to their advantage. It took a long time, but fewer people drive drunk now, and these days, you can go to a bar in quite a few places without coming home smelling like smoke. In the case of tobacco, this was accomplished by some lawsuits, a few bans, and a lot of encouraging people to see cigarettes as just not as cool as previously thought.

Taking a stab (ha!) at gun laws and practices.

Some of these may already be in place in certain locations. But here goes. This is a grab bag--some ideas are practical, some aimed at taking guns out of the hands of irresponsible owners, some are pure marketing. Regarding the assault weapons ban, maybe it's great, maybe it's dumb. My sense is that it probably needs some work. What doesn't?

As AT pointed out, the law would have kept a gun out of Adam Lanza's hands if his mom hadn't been a "prepper." (And maybe he wouldn't have tried to buy one if she hadn't been. The investigation may reveal more about this.)

Pages

History

Member for
13 years 6 months

Latest Comments