The antis seem way more worried about honest citizens having guns than....

[Logical]

they seem worried about criminals having guns.

The CCW license holders cause very very few problems. The average citizen is much more likely to have trouble with the law than a CCW license holder.

It once again amazes me that progressive DU members do not think that honest, law abiding citizens should be able to defend themselves against criminals with guns.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BeFree]

2. Right

That is why every gun owner needs to get a license.

""....license holders cause very very few problems.""

We totally agree!!

[petronius]

6. You skipped three letters in your quote, but if this means you're in favor

of shall-issue CCW then I applaud your clear-thinking...

[BeFree]

7. Really it is easy

If you want to carry a gun anywhere, you get a license.

If you are found capable, and of good mind, etc. you can get a license.

Who would object? Just criminals.

[petronius]

10. That's exactly what many (most) pro-RKBA advocates support: permits

to carry a concealed weapon that are automatically available (shall issue) to anyone who wants one, provided that person has not been judicially disqualified. Permit requirements should not pose any financial, administrative, or logistical impediment.

It's a win-win-win: those who wish to carry can do so, those who don't want to see guns don't have to, and we all can know that those carrying legally have the knowledge to do so safely...

[PavePusher]

13. What other Civil Rights should require require a licence, aka "state permission"?

May I see your First Amendment licence for those books you have, Citizen? You have been "found capable, and of good mind, etc.", amIrite? Only criminals would object, amIrite?

[BeFree]

16. well

There are certain books you are not allowed to have.
Gee, can you fathom what those are?

The constitution does not say you can bear arms no mater what.
Are you afraid of getting a license so that the rest of the public knows that at the very least you are not a crazy or likely to use a gun for criminal intent?

[PavePusher]

17. What books would those be?

The only example I can think of (worked an odd set of shifts last 36 hours, so I am admitedly a bit fuzzy today), is child porn, with a direct and demonstratable harmful effect simply in the manufacture and distribution, let alone use, and no positive affects I can think of. Guns do not fit that description, and demonstratably have a positive effect when used non-criminally.

And actually, the plain-English meaning and context of the words "...shall not be infringed." certainly seem to bar any restrictions.

Why are you so afraid to get a licence for your books, "so that the rest of the public knows that at the very least you are not a crazy or likely to use (them) for criminal intent"? My concern is that doing so converts a Constitutional Right to a government-controlled privilege and that the methodology is such that I am considered guilty until I prove myself innocent. Exactly the reverse of how our Republic is supposed to work. The Government may not intrude itself into my affairs, or the exercise of my Rights and freedoms, unless I present a documentable danger to myself or others. That was the basis that our country was founded on, and that we should aspire to.

Edit for spelling. ugh.

[BeFree]

22. Guns are a documentable danger

And there are many other limits on free speech.

I am not suggesting the right to bear arms as long as you are capable and sane be infringed.

Just prove you are. Like proving you can drive.
Which is just barely very protective of stopping dangers to yourself and others.

[PavePusher]

28. So, you do advocate infringement, as you imply that I am guilty....

until I prove myself innocent.

Yeah, you really don't want to go down that road....

[MicaelS]

19. "The rest of the public"????

I bet you would like to have a publicly searchable database, so anyone can check to see if anyone has a permit. That way you can "out" anyone who has a gun permit. It's none of YOUR fucking business, nor any member of the public, who has or doesn't have a gun permit of any type. The only people that need to know that are law enforcement.

[BeFree]

20. Makes sense

But what are you worried about if there was a search able database?

I can see few problems that might entail.

There are databases now for drivers license, and voting, among others.
What makes gun owners 'special'?

[MicaelS]

24. Because a person who has a permit might

(1) Be a woman hiding from an violent ex-husband, or ex-boyfriend.
(2) Be a witness who helped send someone to prison.
(3) Wants to avoid gang members living in their neighborhood.
(4) Doesn't want their anti-gun neighbors to know because said neighbors might harass them or try to "out" them.
(5) Doesn't want their anti-gun boss / employer to know because they're afraid of being fired.
(6) Doesn't want to have to worry about criminals breaking in steal their guns.

Those are just a few. I'm sure others will add to the list.

[BeFree]

25. But if you have a gun

You can protect yourself!

But really, one Loughner type getting a gun does more damage than all those combined times 10.
Besides, drivers license, et al, can be used the same in most of those 6 cases.

[MicaelS]

26. As others have posted here...

You are not going to infringe upon my freedoms because of the actions of criminals.

[BeFree]

27. You can bear arms

You just have to prove you are capable and sane.

And incapable and insane person with a gun is a direct threat to my freedoms. Duh!

[PavePusher]

30. You seem unclear on the concept of "Rights". n/t

[BeFree]

33. No. You are.

I just don't understand what you are afraid of.
I am afraid of insane and incapable people bearing arms.

[MicaelS]

34. Capable, that, depends on each state..

But sanity???? I don't have to prove shit to you or anyone else. You have to prove I am insane. In court. Innocent until proven guilty is what our system is based on.

[BeFree]

37. Eh?

Three people can get someone thrown in the loony bin.

So....wrong again. Try hitting the target. <grin>

[rrneck]

35. Wrong.

You, via the state, have to prove inability to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. You are confusing the term "citizen" with the term "consumer".

[BeFree]

36. Wish that were tue

In a perfect world it might be so.

Being as there are many laws made before my time that I have to now fulfill.

Surely you don't suggest anybody and everyone should be able to own a gun without any prior responsibility shown?

[PavePusher]

40. Here's a litmus test for you....

Are you willing to apply that criteria to any other Civil Right? Preferably all of them....

"Surely you don't suggest anybody and everyone should be able to..." vote, insist on non-slave status, refuse warrantless searches and seizures, insist on due process of law, etc., "without any prior responsibility shown?"

[rrneck]

43. The determination regarding firearms ownership

is made with something called due process. Due process depends on the rules of evidence as adjucated by the apropriate civil authority. Some call it justice. Those who are denied the right to own or carry a firearm have been proven unable to fulfill the responsiblities of ownership. Citizens don't have to prove shit.

[oneshooter]

41. Would you also have a test to proove that you are able to vote in a "sane and capable" manner?

[BeFree]

42. There are certain limits to voting

This conflating voting with gun banging is ridiculous. When did a voter's ballot ever kill anyone?

This reaching down low is pretty petty. One would think gun owners wouldn't be so irresponsible.
But then, that's the problem isn't it? Too may gun owners are irresponsible.

[rrneck]

45. How many people

voted for George W. Bush? How many people died as a result? Both the right to vote and the right to keep and bear arms are enumerated in the constitution. If you don't like it, change the second amendment.

[oneshooter]

46. Nice run around (not really!) Answer the question asked

Would you require a test be given before one is allowed to vote?

A simple yes/no answer is all that is needed.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[BeFree]

47. well one does have to prove who he is, where he lives

and sign an affidavit that he is allowed by law to vote. They call it... OMG. NO!! Registering!!

No one ever got killed by a ballot. To even attempt to equate ballots with bullets is asinine.

[PavePusher]

58. Not at all equivalent to your proposal.

And yes, votes do cause deaths. Don't be disingenuous.

P.S. The Right to vote and the Right to "keep and bear arms" are both Civil Rights of equal weight and value. All Civil Rights are equal in importance, they are mutually supporting and diminishing one diminishes all of them.

[Euromutt]

61. I'm not sure I like the placing of that burden of proof

I rather like the way "shall issue" generally works, namely that the executive branch of government cannot refuse to issue you a permit unless it can prove that you are not capable and sane, according to certain criteria set out by the legislature and generally dependent on judicial action to confirm (e.g. that you have been convicted of a violent felony, or been adjudicated to present a danger to others).

[NewMoonTherian]

67. Now wait. I've got to stop you on that one.

It's blowing my mind that nobody already has.

A driver's license can be used the same in most of those cases? Do you find a lot of anti-driving bosses or neighbors? A lot of dangerous people who might find a person's driving status useful in deciding how to attack someone? Does is sound feasible that a thief would troll DMV databases looking for someone who has a driver's license in order to know where there are cars to be stolen? I don't know what the gang instance is all about, to be honest, but I'm going to have to call upon you to defend your remark.

[Logical]

8. Little slow today, do not know what letters I missed.

[petronius]

9. Not you - BeFree left off "CCW" in the quote from your OP

:)

[BeFree]

12. CCW

If you want a gun, you get a license. If you have a license, you can carry a gun, concealed or not.

Problem is the radical gun people don't want to be licensed. They want to have the same freedoms as a criminal who shouldn't be allowed to have guns.

[PavePusher]

14. Operative word there is "freedoms"....

but you seem to link them only to criminal behavior.

You may want to rethink your wording there, it comes across as deeply disturbing about your motives and point of view.

[BeFree]

15. Wrong. Again

I said it is criminals who have complete freedom to own a weapon. No license needed.

It is true, isn't it, that licensed people are not much of a problem?

[PavePusher]

18. So why do you think they would be a problem without that piece of paper?

That is the clear implication you are making, that obtaining a piece of government-issue paper makes a person safe and trustable. Except that those people are already that way without the paper.

The clear evidence of the futility of such is that states that do not require the paper to carry, have not demonstrated increases in crime, or markedly above-average rates of crime, before or after such restrictions were imposed or lifted.

[BeFree]

23. Loughner as an example

""Except that those people are already that way without the paper.""

Loughner proves you are wrong. Loughner types must be stopped.

[PavePusher]

29. Please explain how a piece of paper would have stopped him....

when other pieces of paper empirically did not.

We'll wait....

[BeFree]

32. What other license/paper are you on about?

If Loughner had to prove he was sane and capable he would have most likely been stopped.

How, in your mind, could he have been stopped otherwise?

[Euromutt]

66. Wait, wasn't there something you said in post #15?

I said it is criminals who have complete freedom to own a weapon. No license needed.

If that is the case, how does any licensing system prevent someone who is already intent on breaking the law from acquiring a firearm illegally?

[gejohnston]

39. not exactly

criminal, generally someone who has a previous felony conviction, may not own a or touch a firearm for life (unless conviction is vacated or pardoned). It has been a federal crime since 1938. Does not have to be a violent crime, just any felony.

[BeFree]

44. But

A felon can buy guns very easily. How do we stop that? The only way I see is to license all gun buyers.

[gejohnston]

48. How do they stop it in Canada, UK, Jamaica

The latter two have complete bans. The last one makes us look like Japan and Norway, so even with licensing it can not be done. You are under the mistaken assumption that these people buy guns the same places I do. The NICS process prevents this and BATFE statistics verifies this. According to BATFE, they don't go to gun shows either. In the UK, you can get a pistol or sub-machine gun for £2,000 for a new or as low as £200 for a used one.

[rrneck]

49. If it's illegal for a felon to posess a gun

why would we demand they get a license for something they shouldn't have in the first place?

[BeFree]

50. If we license all gun ownwers

only felon gun owners won't be licensed.

And, of course, to buy bullets you'd have to be licensed.

Sure, it won't end all the carnage. How do you suggest we end the carnage?

[rrneck]

51. Non licence holding felons

will still buy guns because they don't care whether its illegal or not. Not having the proper paperwork is no disincentive at all for someone willing to commit murder and mayhem. Requiring everyone to be licenced who dosen't plan to break the law is a waste of recources and an infringement of our civil rights.

You "stop the carnage by putting criminals in jail and rehabilitating them. Maintaining a just and fair society needs to happen too. That cannot be accomplished by shredding the bill of rights.

Of course a perfect world is not possible. There will always be bad guys. Do you have a firearm free self defense solution?

[tortoise1956]

56. Here's why I don't support required licensing to just own a gun...

I do not want the government to have a list of my firearms because I don't TRUST the government. While it may not be a problem at first, sooner or later the State will find a way to use it against us.

Before you go laughing and calling me a kook, let me give you some examples of what I mean:

When the Australian government decided to outlaw certain types of weapons, they used the database they had built on gun owners to make their job simpler.

After hurricane Katrina, police attempted to confiscate weapons from the survivors. It wasn't in any way legal, but that didn't stop them. If they had a list of gun owners, do you have any doubts that they would have used that information?

So, the lesson to take from this is: the government - ANY government - should not be trusted with Any information it doesn't absolutely need to do its job.

[gravity556]

63. re:If we license all gun ownwers

Sure. Permission to exercise a right-to own firearms, purchase ammo. Then no one will ever again be murdered or commit suicide and the criminals, having failed to plan ahead and stock up, suddenly find themselves as threatening as a cute little kitten, right?

Except you want a searchable database of those permission slips (you know, so you can see if your neighbor is one of those dirty gun mongers), just like a searchable database of sex offenders. Oooooh! The more stigma you can heap on gun owners, the better, amiright? And the best thing is, *you* wouldn't have to worry about a group of gangbangers printing a list of conveniently located (oh, you should definitely index types of guns on your list. that way you know who has those super dangerous semi-automatic bullet hoses with the super-murder high capacity murder clips) firearms and going house to house until they find someone at home to torture into opening the safe. Because *you* wouldn't own one of those things. Your neighbor, however (or more accurately, whoever's unlucky enough to be at your neighbor's house) will totally be screwed when 6 or 8 guys bust in in the middle of the night for a little shopping.

You should totally put out a newsletter. You could run a "Gun owner of the week" strip, pulling a random name from your town and listing their name, address, kind and number of firearms-that sort of thing. Like a community awareness bit. And on the back page, you could list a "Home Invasion of the Week". Big drama-list out how many survivors, what injuries, what kind of agony was inflicted to get the goods and the hospital room number(s) of the survivor(s) and whether they're going to testify or if they got descriptions. Concurrent to that, you could list all the accidental shootings in the area-particularly if the shooter claims that they opened fire because someone was beating on their door at midnight, and their neighbor got robbed and beaten by a dozen guys from MS13. Because everyone knows, gun owners are rampant paranoiacs just itching to shoot someone.

As a boon, anyone who applied for a permit and listed said robberies as a reason for wanting a gun will out themselves as a paranoid individual, letting the deciding body disqualify them for life right then and there, right? And you can use the continued gang violence (in an effort to steal guns)and resulting aforementioned "shooting whoever's kicking the front door at midnight" incidents to continue to tighten the noose, banning guns completely, which is the goal of "gun control advocates" anyhow. Sure, criminals will still have guns and ammo (all they can steal!), but getting the guns away from the purported "law abiding citizen" is just as big a victory.

After all, once the ban gets handed down and the gun violence continues-sure, mostly because criminals by definition are inadherent to the laws of the land-those folks who know what's best for us can just start in on those other pesky "rights" that folks insist on hanging on to. Like the 4th amendment-who needs that shit? If the police have to be bothered to get a warrant, that house full of gangbangers, guns and weed might empty out, and then it's due process that's interfering with making everyone safe...














*in the event that the above sounded as though I were agreeing, please have your sarcasm meter sent in for recalibration. if what was written sounds like good policy, please paint your head orange so that the rest of us can identify you in traffic and give you a wide berth.

[PavePusher]

64. Awesome-sauce. n/t

[Euromutt]

62. In principle, I could support those ideas...

But part of the reason even non-radical "gun people" are leery of licensing systems is that, all too often in the past, those systems have left a certain amount of discretion to the executive branch of government, members of whom have abused that discretion to enforce the law in a selective and discriminatory manner. If someone were to propose a licensing system that were wholly non-discretionary, I'd be open to the idea, but those individuals on this forum who agitate for licensing generally don't seem to want it to be non-discretionary.

[Logical]

31. Oh, OK, good catch!

[spin]

3. Many Democrats live in areas where only criminals have handguns ...

such as Washington D.C. or Chicago. New York City does allow citizens to own and even carry firearms with the proper license but obtaining one is expensive, time consuming and difficult. The rich, the famous and the well connected seem to be able to be the licenses in NYC, the average person can basically forget it.

When the only people you know with handguns are criminals and you see violent crime around you, it's easy to understand why you might favor draconian gun laws or even bans and confiscation.

However, if you live in an area where gun ownership is common, you can easily view firearms in a more favorable light.

When a state first allows "shall issue" concealed carry it is often viewed with fear. Some of this is caused by the media irresponsibly predicting that allowing honest citizens to carry concealed will lead to shoot outs at every intersection, show downs at high noon and a return to the Wild West.

After a few years, people finally realize that those who legally carry firearms are not crazed lunatics looking for the chance to play Dirty Harry.

[ZombieHorde]

5. I completely agree. I was even thinking about making an OP saying basically the same. nt

[east texas lib]

4. They just don't want any crabs escaping the pot...

Everybody must boil!;-)

[rrneck]

11. They're worried about

defending an off the shelf ideology designed to make them feel good.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ileus]

38. Honest citizens make for easy targets...they know criminals can't be controlled.

If they can get half the firearms out of circulation that's a start...

[MyrnaLoy]

52. sure

[friendly_iconoclast]

60. Class, can we say "The number of an events occurance and the rate of said events...

occurance are two different things?" We can? I just knew we could!

[PavePusher]

65. You are begining to fit the classical definition of insanity. n/t

[applegrove]

53. Whenever we progressives point out that lax gun laws have made for boomtimes

for illegal guns we get told to shush up.

[gejohnston]

54. So "prove it" is the new "shush up"? Gee, I wonder why

"salt of the earth types" don't take "progressives" seriously.
What ever happened to liberal, as in the enlightenment? The right made liberal a dirty word, and some on our side indulge them with a buzz word like "progressive" which means moving forward, but never explains moving forward to what. Since we want to go back to FDR and Ike, are we not really regressive on some level?

[applegrove]

55. I'm a salt of the earth type and a liberal and a progressive. Why would you assume the two are

mutually exclusive?

[gejohnston]

57. I don't necessarily

Although it does imply rural, blue collar, may be socially moderate or semi socially conservative or simply "non informed" or politically neutral.
Here is a question, how is carrying the water for right wingers like Paul Helmke, Bill Bennett (who thought up the AWB), Josh Sugermann, Mike Bloomburg, and the Bradys "progressive"?

If the gun issue is a defining left/right litmus test, then where does that put NRA members like JFK and Truman?
or "pro gun progressives" like Howard Dean and Brian Schweitzer?

[Union Scribe]

59. Seems like the only time they mention crime is to smear legal owners.

A lot of bloody shirt waving and crocodile tears, all theatre used to attack owners, carriers, and often other DUers.