gejohnston
gejohnston's JournalIf you could buy the Cleveland baseball team, or the
DC NFL team, what would you change their names to?
Why did gangs rarely use guns before the Gun Control Act?
Of course, my question is "why didn't they use them until then?" It couldn't be about access. until the Gun Conrol Act,all they needed was a Sears catalog and a money order. If they were in New York, they just needed a PO box in CT, or one of the many "undocumented pharmacies" to do it for them. Where I grew up, guns were, and are, in about 55-70 percent of the households. Yet when the cops had their "scare straight board" they would bring to health class in the 1970s they not only brought examples of various drugs and paraphernalia, but also confiscated weapons. Other than a rifle and shotgun that got the hacksaw treatment, the were knives and improvised medieval melee weapons. Which begs the question, why make a mace when you can rip off Mom's .38?
Was it because they wanted guns, but could not afford them?
Was it because guns were for "wusses", kind of like the criminal element in the UK even before UK had any gun control laws? (Starboard Tack referred to this as "the rules"
Was it because guns were associated with cops, outdoors people, and the "squares" in rifle club, while the King Bad Ass in the movies had switchblades and homemade zip guns?
http://www.ojjdp.gov/jjbulletin/9808/youth.html
http://newyorkcitygangs.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/15/nyregion/with-brass-knuckled-tales-50-s-street-gang-looks-back.html
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/43455_1.pdf
http://researchmatters.asu.edu/stories/professor-unearths-1950s-research-gangs-2052
My definition of "sensible" federal gun control law.
Before we add any new laws, I think we need to make current laws sensible. My proposal is this:
Current NFA weapons:
----SBRs and SBSs become Title 1 weapons under the Gun Control Act. Why? Under current law, a single shot .22 with a 15 inch barrel are as strictly regulated as machine guns (minus the Hughs Amendment), and much tighter than an AR-15. AFAIK, we are the only country that does that and it isn't logical.
----Silencers become unregulated accessories as they are in Norway, UK, France, New Zealand, and Finland.
----Novelty guns like pen guns etc. I have no opinion either way so far.
----Machine guns and destructive devices, as currently defined, stay Title 2.
Title 1 GCA:
---keep current regulations on interstate sales.
---Change the definition of "prohibited person" slightly. Life time prohibitions would only be for violent felonies. Someone who got busted for having a joint or two in Utah in 1975 shouldn't be a lifetime prohibition. For none violent crimes (including those who shouldn't be crimes to start with) prohibition ends when you are off parole or probation. As for misdemeanor, DV (where violence is proven) would be life time.
--- Misdemeanor like simple assault, at least a temporary prohibition of five years. Getting in a one time bar fight when you are "young and stupid" is different than a 30 year old who picks bar fights just to top off "a night on the town".
----"Violent" felonies not involving humans. Lifetime prohibition on anyone convicted of felony animal cruelty, dog fighting, illegally killing federally protected wildlife (eagles for example) and poaching (IIRC, Texas made poaching a felony. In Wyoming, your third strike is a felony.) "Mentally ill" would remain those adjudicated by a judge. LaPierre's "mentally ill" registry idea, and gun control advocates jumping on his band wagon, was repugnant. It scapegoats many of the least violent people in society, and is open to be misused (antis redefining "mentally ill" simply to create more "prohibited persons". That is also the real reason behind the idea to add "terror watch list" to NICS. Which brings me to,
---"Terror watch list" aka Bushes bogus list. It should have gone the way of Tom Ridge's color code. A secret list where people land up on due to clerical errors or political reasons, without any due process, simply doesn't have a place in a free society.
Background checks:
still working on how I would do intra-state private sales. So far, I would give FFLs and incentive to do them by changing the procedures. Currently, AFAIK, FFLs have to log the gun in their bound book and log it out with the 4473. To broker private sales, I would have a different form and not require it be logged in as part of the store's inventory.
National reciprocity: I think a federal law forcing states to recognize all CCW permits from other states and territories would violate the 10th Amendment. They don't even do that with medical and law licenses.
Misc: "assault weapon" bans. It is a legal political term created for propaganda purposes. Some "assault weapons" have no military or police application at all. For example, high end target pistols like the Walther GSP are "assault weapons" in New York and California. There is nothing "military style" about them.
wealth inequality, not guns.
snip
Despite both nations being disarmed and having almost no "gun-related homicides," according to UN statistics*, Japan and the UK still have an astronomical gap in homicide rates. Why? A visit to either country reveals an entirely different culture, education system, infrastructure, and socioeconomic paradigm. This is why despite Japan having a much larger population, even total homicides are lower than the comparatively more violent but less populated United Kingdom - with homicide rates in the UK nearly 3 times higher than those in Japan.
According to the UN's study, which includes the most recent annual data available, Japan, with a population of roughly 130 million, had a mere 506 homicides over the stretch of a single year. Conversely, the UK, with less than half of Japan's population (53 million) had 722 homicides. The rates per 100,000 people for Japan and the UK are 0.4 and 1.2 respectively. The UK, despite being an unarmed population, and having virtually no gun violence, still has 3 times the murder rate than the nation of Japan. Those that are murdered in the UK or Japan, are just as dead as any human being murdered by a gun in the United States. And clearly, this indicates that the presence of guns, or their banning, is not a significant factor driving homicides and violence.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-end-gun-debate-forever.html
On the flip side, "armed to the teeth", though not as much as us, countries like Finland, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, and maybe Iceland are very safe.
What are you doing to cure or prevent
Nature deficit disorder?
What is nature deficit disorder? It's not a medical term, but a social trend. The term describes "the human costs of alienation from nature, among them diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illness," Louv explains. We're raising the very first generation of Americans to grow up disconnected with nature, he says, and this broken relationship is making kids overweight, depressed and distracted.
Society inadvertently teaches children to fear the outdoors, where there's traffic, nature and strangers, and feel safest inside (where, unfortunately, air quality can be 10 times worse, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). Maybe you remember playing outdoors with friends from dawn to dusk on summer weekends several blocks away from home when you were young. By 1990, according to one study, the radius of play around a house for a nine-year-old had shrunk to one-ninth of what it was 20 years earlier. Louv pointed to a recent UCLA report showing that American kids now spend virtually no time in their own yards.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/definitions/nature-deficit-disorder
http://www.education.com/topic/nature-deficit-disorder/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder
Watched this Nova episode on spree killers
http://video.pbs.org/video/2332614200?starttime=117000While it talked about specifically shooters within the US,
reminded me of a quote by German sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer after a spree murder in a Dutch mall a couple of years ago.
Yes it was discussed here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x401308
One kid said he bought a gun for sixty bucks. He didn't get it from a straw purchaser, gun show, or flea market. Neither did the guy he bought it from.
former NRA lobbyist says NRA more about own pockets than gun owners
http://www.amazon.com/Ricochet-Confessions-Lobbyist-Richard-Feldman/dp/0471679283http://www.independentfirearmowners.org/
As far as I can tell, their board of directors don't include has been fourth rate rockers, bat shit crazy neocons, or any of the baggage the NRA has for the past 35 years.
I found the interview interesting.
DIY tractors and other cool stuff
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Marcin_Jakubowski
justice served but still denied
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/jerry-hartfield-texas-inmate-retrial_n_2404738.htmlAt that point, with Hartfield off death row and back in the general prison population, the case became dormant.
"Nothing got filed. They had me thinking my case was on appeal for 27 years," said Hartfield, who is described in court documents as an illiterate fifth-grade dropout with an IQ of 51, but who says he has since learned to read and has become a devout Christian.
A federal judge in Houston recently ruled that Hartfield's conviction and sentence ceased to exist when the appeals court overturned them – meaning there was no sentence for White to commute. But Hartfield isn't likely to go free or be retried soon because the state has challenged a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision favorable to Hartfield, arguing he missed a one-year window in which to appeal aspects of his case.
simple question
or maybe not so simple, but it is a question for both sides. What would cause you to change your own view on guns and what gun laws should be, or change your opinion of what the party platform should read?
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Rock Springs, Wyoming
Current location: Sweetwater County, Wyoming & Citrus County, Florida
Member since: Mon Aug 7, 2006, 12:19 AM
Number of posts: 17,502
