General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am done being sick to my stomach [View all]Cheezoholic
(2,016 posts)I have one question, why hasn't anything been done. Brady Bill? Thats Swiss Cheese and we all know it. The assault weapons ban? So weak and did not address the issues AT ALL which is registration, which is licensing, which is background checks, which is requiring, at a minimum, to regulate weapons the same way we regulate the only other potentially deadly weapon citizens own, a fucking car. Democrats have pussy footed this issue long enough. Yes they have passed more legislation than the right on this, but it's always with weak legs at best. Yes the left has the right ideas that need to be done but those ideas get washed out by the time it gets to any type of law.
Taking guns away from people won't work. Making it unlawful to own weapons that people already own won't work. Denying people from owning an AR-15 won't work. Requiring licenses and requiring registration of ALL firearms will work. More importantly, strict regulation of ammunition, by type, even banning ammunition like hollow points, from the current firearms in the wild should be of the highest priority. There's no reason for any gun enthusiast to own hollow points period for example. That would immediately reduce the the potential lethality of any firearm by 30 or 40%.
I am a liberal gun owner. I have 23 different firearms. I enjoy shooting guns. I was raised shooting guns. Before the NRA was hijacked in the late 70's I was trained on gun safety by that very body. That's what the NRA was then, gun safety for hunters and especially for young people. It was almost a requirement to go through an NRA safety course before you could even hunt with your elders, many of which went through the same NRA safety training when they were young. Local NRA meetings were almost like going to a Moose Lodge dinner. Not so much anymore.
What have I done? I have many friends that I go shoot with at the range. Most of them have been avid anti gun regulation. I can tell you, and I am emphatic about this, I have opened up their understanding of gun regulation to the point most of them are now all for proper gun regulation. It's not gun control. I despise that phrase and wish the left and right would quit using it. It immediately implies Army trucks driving through cities and towns forcing people to throw their firearms in the trucks at gun point. Yes, this is what many gun owners believe.
The misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment has forever cursed us with the most heavily armed population per capita in the world, we're not going to get rid of what's out there. What we can do, should've already done, is license and regulate firearms just as we do vehicles. And that's what I meant about 30 years ago. You can't "ban" firearms that are already out there. You can't make it illegal to sell firearms that were legally purchased for decades. How would you feel if cars weren't regulated and suddenly the government decided that certain vehicles were deadly weapons and must be surrendered and you had 30k invested in one of those vehicles.
The entire reason of my post was yes, I get sick to my stomach because just not the right refusing to acknowledge the issue using it as a policy point to play politics at the expense of innocent lives, but also at the lefts ineptitude at properly addressing the issue. For Gods sake, this issue can be fixed if either side would stop going to the extreme for political gain. Regulate the damn things like cars, shit can ammunition that even the Geneva Convention has banned from warfare, and acknowledge we're in too deep when it comes to firearms. Education like the NRA used to do, regulation like we currently do with vehicles and licensing like we currently do with drivers. IMHO this is the only way out of the infection of firearms that has festered way to long in this country. Both arguments can be satisfied with truth and honest leadership that doesn't have Smith and Wesson in their pockets.