Including registration, gun bans or your limit on firearm ownership. These are basically "feel good" laws and do not address any real problem. Violent crime is and has been decreasing and now is back at the levels of the 60s. Whatever we are doing is working. Statistics show that more guns do not equal more crime.
In 2009 America's crime rate was roughly the same as in 1968, with the homicide rate being at its lowest level since 1964. Overall, the national crime rate was 3466 crimes per 100,000 residents, down from 3680 crimes per 100,000 residents forty years earlier in 1969 (-9.4%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_over_time
2010 was even safer.
According to the figures released today by the FBI, the estimated number of violent crimes in 2010 declined for the fourth consecutive year. Property crimes also decreased, marking this the eighth straight year that the collective estimates for these offenses declined.
The 2010 statistics show that the estimated volumes of violent and property crimes declined 6.0 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively, when compared with the 2009 estimates. The violent crime rate for the year was 403.6 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants (a 6.5 percent decrease from the 2009 rate), and the property crime rate was 2,941.9 offenses per 100,000 persons (a 3.3 percent decrease from the 2009 figure).
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2010-crime-statistics
And the preliminary figures for 2011 are even better!
Statistics released today in the FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report indicate that the number of violent crimes reported in the first six months of 2011 declined 6.4 percent when compared with figures from the first six months of 2010. The number of property crimes decreased 3.7 percent for the same time frame. The report is based on information from more than 12,500 law enforcement agencies that submitted three to six comparable months of data to the FBI in the first six months of 2010 and 2011.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-preliminary-semiannual-crime-statistics-for-2011
Our party would be far better off to just forget about the gun control issue and simply suggest improving and enforcing existing gun laws just as Obama has. Every time a Democrat in some very liberal bastion of the nation comes out with a new gun control idea, the news rapidly spreads across the nation. Many gun owners who live in areas where even the Democratic politicians are for RKBA decide to not vote for any Democrat ever. It hurts our party which is why I say we are shooting ourselves in the foot by pushing for new gun control.
I do not oppose tweaking existing gun laws to make them more effective and strict enforcement of these laws. However there is little support for the implementation of more gun control in today's society.
[div class="excerpt"
October 26, 2011
Record-Low 26% in U.S. Favor Handgun Ban
Support for stricter gun laws in general is lowest Gallup has measured
by Jeffrey M. Jones
Implications
Americans have shifted to a more pro-gun view on gun laws, particularly in recent years, with record-low support for a ban on handguns, an assault rifle ban, and stricter gun laws in general. This is the case even as high-profile incidents of gun violence continue in the United States, such as the January shootings at a meeting for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.
The reasons for the shift do not appear related to reactions to the crime situation, as Gallup's Crime poll shows no major shifts in the trends in Americans' perceptions of crime, fear of crime, or reports of being victimized by crime in recent years. Nor does it appear to be tied to an increase in gun ownership, which has been around 40% since 2000, though it is a slightly higher 45% in this year's update. The 2011 updates on these trends will appear on Gallup.com in the coming days.
Perhaps the trends are a reflection of the American public's acceptance of guns. In 2008, Gallup found widespread agreement with the idea that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to own guns. Americans may also be moving toward more libertarian views in some areas, one example of which is greater support for legalizing marijuana use. Diminished support for gun-control laws may also be tied to the lack of major gun-control legislation efforts in Congress in recent years.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun-ban.aspx
I agree this next election will probably be one of the nastiest in American history. However I believe there will be some improvement in the economy and that will enable Obama to win reelection. At this point it looks like the Republicans will make the mistake of nominating Romney and they will be wondering why he got squashed by Obama. Romney is not just a flip flopper, he is a shape shifter. The Republican base obviously dislikes him and if he gets the nomination they will simply not show up at the polls to vote. None of the other Republican candidates at this time look capable of even running a national campaign and they all seem a little strange and somewhat looney. Plus there is a possibility that someone like Trump or Palin will run on a third party ticket which would guarantee Obama's win even if the economy doesn't improve.
I too worry about Obama's safety but usually assassination attempts are tried by nuts such as Hinckley or are quite possibly hits carried out by professionals as may have happened during the Kennedy assassination. Obama hasn't proved to be a significant threat to the military industrial complex or any other powerful group for that matter. Therefore I have confidence that the Secret Service can deal with the nuts and nobody of any real power will feel threatened enough to hire the best hit men existing. Of course, if Obama were killed, draconian gun control would become possible even if a firearm was not involved. I pray for him not only to be a successful President but to survive. I did the same for every President after I lived through the Kennedy assassination as a teenager. Those were troubled times.
A question, you say. "my beef is not with responsible gun owners, my beef is with irresponsible gun owners and those who enable the possession of weapons by dangerous individuals such as the criminal, deranged, and hate groups." If that is actually true why do you want to limit the number of firearms that I own as I don't fit into any of those categories?
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