Your Gun Control Laws

[*Nately120*]

It's all BS anyways. The right wing can go on and on about the 2nd amendment and freedom and the importance of an armed society, but I bet more than 0 of them would vote YES on a bill that would make buying guns illegal for Muslims and blacks. Perhaps I'm biased, but I feel like the NRA is more about painting a portrait of a law-abiding gun owner as a clean-cut white person. Or maybe NRA ads show black guys with assault rifles and hope that their supporters realize not every black guy is going to use it for evil.

Ok, I'm off track.

[StLucieBengal]

(12-07-2015, 05:46 PM)Nately120 Wrote: It's all BS anyways.  The right wing can go on and on about the 2nd amendment and freedom and the importance of an armed society, but I bet more than 0 of them would vote YES on a bill that would make buying guns illegal for Muslims and blacks.  Perhaps I'm biased, but I feel like the NRA is more about painting a portrait of a law-abiding gun owner as a clean-cut white person.  Or maybe NRA ads show black guys with assault rifles and hope that their supporters realize not every black guy is going to use it for evil.

Ok, I'm off track.

Actually it was Dems who pushed to make sure blacks couldn't get guns. They blocked MLK from getting a permit to arm himself.

[*Nately120*]

(12-08-2015, 01:18 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Actually it was Dems who pushed to make sure blacks couldn't get guns.   They blocked MLK from getting a permit to arm himself.

Yea, and I heard when MLK was alive the Cleveland Browns were the best football team on earth.  I guess some things never change, eh?

[Benton]

(12-08-2015, 01:18 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Actually it was Dems who pushed to make sure blacks couldn't get guns.   They blocked MLK from getting a permit to arm himself.

Link?

Cuse, if not, I'd counter with RINOs faked the moon landing as a way to cover up all their anal probing of U.S. citizens.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(12-08-2015, 02:22 AM)Benton Wrote: Link?

Cuse, if not, I'd counter with RINOs faked the moon landing as a way to cover up all their anal probing of U.S. citizens.

Don't worry he will follow up after he meets with his clients later next week.

[*Nately120*]

(12-08-2015, 02:24 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: Don't worry he will follow up after he meets with his clients later next week.

He's probably going to run into Obama at a white-power summit, because you know, Democrats haven't changed in the past 55 years and all.

[GMDino]

(12-08-2015, 01:18 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Actually it was Dems who pushed to make sure blacks couldn't get guns.   They blocked MLK from getting a permit to arm himself.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

Quote:The Secret History of Guns

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.


THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation’s Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.
The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. “The American people in general and the black people in particular,” he announced, must

Quote:take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.

Seale then turned to the others. “All right, brothers, come on. We’re going inside.” He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state’s most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.


It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers’ invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement.


THE TEXT OF the Second Amendment is maddeningly ambiguous. It merely says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yet to each side in the gun debate, those words are absolutely clear.


Gun-rights supporters believe the amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms and outlaws most gun control. Hard-line gun-rights advocates portray even modest gun laws as infringements on that right and oppose widely popular proposals—such as background checks for all gun purchasers—on the ground that any gun-control measure, no matter how seemingly reasonable, puts us on the slippery slope toward total civilian disarmament.


This attitude was displayed on the side of the National Rifle Association’s former headquarters: THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. The first clause of the Second Amendment, the part about “a well regulated Militia,” was conveniently omitted. To the gun lobby, the Second Amendment is all rights and no regulation.
Although decades of electoral defeats have moderated the gun-control movement’s stated goals, advocates still deny that individual Americans have any constitutional right to own guns. The Second Amendment, in their view, protects only state militias. Too politically weak to force disarmament on the nation, gun-control hard-liners support any new law that has a chance to be enacted, however unlikely that law is to reduce gun violence. For them, the Second Amendment is all regulation and no rights.


While the two sides disagree on the meaning of the Second Amendment, they share a similar view of the right to bear arms: both see such a right as fundamentally inconsistent with gun control, and believe we must choose one or the other. Gun rights and gun control, however, have lived together since the birth of the country. Americans have always had the right to keep and bear arms as a matter of state constitutional law. Today, 43 of the 50 state constitutions clearly protect an individual’s right to own guns, apart from militia service.
Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.
For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.


OPPOSITION TO GUN CONTROL was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.
Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X, Newton and Seale decided to fight back. Before he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X had preached against Martin Luther King Jr.’s brand of nonviolent resistance. Because the government was “either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property” of blacks, he said, they had to defend themselves “by whatever means necessary.” Malcolm X illustrated the idea for Ebony magazine by posing for photographs in suit and tie, peering out a window with an M-1 carbine semiautomatic in hand. Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. “Article number two of the constitutional amendments,” Malcolm X argued, “provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.”


Guns became central to the Panthers’ identity, as they taught their early recruits that “the gun is the only thing that will free us—gain us our liberation.” They bought some of their first guns with earnings from selling copies of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to students at the University of California at Berkeley. In time, the Panther arsenal included machine guns; an assortment of rifles, handguns, explosives, and grenade launchers; and “boxes and boxes of ammunition,” recalled Elaine Brown, one of the party’s first female members, in her 1992 memoir. Some of this matériel came from the federal government: one member claimed he had connections at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, who would sell the Panthers anything for the right price. One Panther bragged that, if they wanted, they could have bought an M48 tank and driven it right up the freeway.


Along with providing classes on black nationalism and socialism, Newton made sure recruits learned how to clean, handle, and shoot guns. Their instructors were sympathetic black veterans, recently home from Vietnam. For their “righteous revolutionary struggle,” the Panthers were trained, as well as armed, however indirectly, by the U.S. government.
Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage.


The Panthers, however, took it to an extreme, carrying their guns in public, displaying them for everyone—especially the police—to see. Newton had discovered, during classes at San Francisco Law School, that California law allowed people to carry guns in public so long as they were visible, and not pointed at anyone in a threatening way.
In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. “I don’t have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address,” he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.


“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.


“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.


Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.


“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.


“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.


By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to move on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn’t interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” Although normally a black man with Newton’s attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn’t committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.


The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest ************ in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.” After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton’s bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.
Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers’ police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. When Newton found out about this, he told Seale, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to the Capitol.” Seale was incredulous. “The Capitol?” Newton explained: “Mulford’s there, and they’re trying to pass a law against our guns, and we’re going to the Capitol steps.” Newton’s plan was to take a select group of Panthers “loaded down to the gills,” to send a message to California lawmakers about the group’s opposition to any new gun control.

THE PANTHERS’ METHODS provoked an immediate backlash. The day of their statehouse protest, lawmakers said the incident would speed enactment of Mulford’s gun-control proposal. Mulford himself pledged to make his bill even tougher, and he added a provision barring anyone but law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the state capitol.


Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He called guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.” In a later press conference, Reagan said he didn’t “know of any sportsman who leaves his home with a gun to go out into the field to hunt or for target shooting who carries that gun loaded.” The Mulford Act, he said, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.”
The fear inspired by black people with guns also led the United States Congress to consider new gun restrictions, after the summer of 1967 brought what the historian Harvard Sitkoff called the “most intense and destructive wave of racial violence the nation had ever witnessed.” Devastating riots engulfed Detroit and Newark. Police and National Guardsmen who tried to help restore order were greeted with sniper fire.


A 1968 federal report blamed the unrest at least partly on the easy availability of guns. Because rioters used guns to keep law enforcement at bay, the report’s authors asserted that a recent spike in firearms sales and permit applications was “directly related to the actuality and prospect of civil disorders.” They drew “the firm conclusion that effective firearms controls are an essential contribution to domestic peace and tranquility.”


Political will in Congress reached the critical point around this time. In April of 1968, James Earl Ray, a virulent racist, used a Remington Gamemaster deer rifle to kill Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. King’s assassination—and the sniper fire faced by police trying to quell the resulting riots—gave gun-control advocates a vivid argument. Two months later, a man wielding a .22-caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver shot Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles. The very next day, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it.


Together, these laws greatly expanded the federal licensing system for gun dealers and clarified which people—including anyone previously convicted of a felony, the mentally ill, illegal-drug users, and minors—were not allowed to own firearms. More controversially, the laws restricted importation of “Saturday Night Specials”—the small, cheap, poor-quality handguns so named by Detroit police for their association with urban crime, which spiked on weekends. Because these inexpensive pistols were popular in minority communities, one critic said the new federal gun legislation “was passed not to control guns but to control blacks.”


INDISPUTABLY, FOR MUCH of American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn’t served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a “new birth of freedom,” but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, “I would say to every colored soldier, ‘Bring your gun home.’”

[Rotobeast]

(12-08-2015, 08:39 AM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

I didn't know much of The Black Panthers. 
Quite interesting. 
Thanks for posting. 

[Benton]

(12-08-2015, 08:39 AM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

Quote:Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He called guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.”

Conservatives everywhere will deny this ever happened.

[6andcounting]

(12-08-2015, 11:32 AM)Rotobeast Wrote: I didn't know much of The Black Panthers. 
Quite interesting. 
Thanks for posting. 

Open carry and assault weapons were not a problem until Malcolm X did it in front of california's Capitol building. Then it was scary.

The issue is still alive today with police killings of blacks becoming a big story in America. Of course, now it's the left who are against being armed against the police, so it's always fun to mess with them over that. Pro 2nd amendment quotes from Malcolm X make heads explode from the cognitive dissonance on the left and Reagan gun control quotes do the same on the right.

[Belsnickel]

I've thought a lot about this over the years between what I think makes sense and what would actually fly in today's political environment. The 2nd Amendment was written in the context of our nation's defense being reliant upon a standing navy and state militias to make up the ground forces, no standing army. In today's society we have a large standing army as well as reservists. We have police forces for domestic situations (which were also not a part of the society the 2nd was set up under). Suffice it to say that in my opinion, the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing the regular citizen's right to own personal firearms for personal use is hogwash. That being said, I do not see a complete disarmament as either feasible or rational.

Gun control, to me, would include:
-Hunting and personal protection firearms only. There is zero need for the citizenry to own semi-automatic firearms in their homes. Zero. There is no argument that has ever been presented to me that has swayed my opinion on this. A revolver will do just fine for personal protection, a shotgun is the best home defense weapon, and if you need a semi for hunting you shouldn't be in the woods.
-State level registration. I don't want a federal database, this is not something they should have their hand in. If a federal LEA needs access they have to request it on a case by case basis from the state. Any access, whether from the local, state, or feds, requires a warrant.
-All transactions recorded. If you are transferring ownership to someone, it must be entered into the system. If not, you are liable for any crimes committed with that firearm. If the firearm is stolen and you do not report it within 72 hours, you are liable.
-Firearm safety training. I'm for it being a part of the school curriculum. Just like sex ed, the parents should be able to opt the student out of any practical experiences, but everyone should know the basics of firearm safety. Whether you live in a home with firearms or not, it is important.

That's my opinion on it all. I don't care how many any person owns or whether they can carry it open or concealed. I'm actually for allowing open and concealed carry of a handgun in public with this since there is safety training involved.

[GMDino]

(12-08-2015, 11:32 AM)Rotobeast Wrote: I didn't know much of The Black Panthers. 
Quite interesting. 
Thanks for posting. 

(12-08-2015, 11:41 AM)Benton Wrote: Conservatives everywhere will deny this ever happened.

(12-08-2015, 12:05 PM)6andcounting Wrote: Open carry and assault weapons were not a problem until Malcolm X did it in front of california's Capitol building. Then it was scary.

The issue is still alive today with police killings of blacks becoming a big story in America. Of course, now it's the left who are against being armed against the police, so it's always fun to mess with them over that. Pro 2nd amendment quotes from Malcolm X make heads explode from the cognitive dissonance on the left and Reagan gun control quotes do the same on the right.

There was some todo on the boards before about "gun control" and I did some reasearch.  I did not know any of this before that.  I feel into the trap of assuming that everything we argue about is something new.  I should have known better.

[StLucieBengal]

(12-08-2015, 02:22 AM)Benton Wrote: Link?

Cuse, if not, I'd counter with RINOs faked the moon landing as a way to cover up all their anal probing of U.S. citizens.

It's pretty common knowledge.   Alabama denied him the permit.    Now if you just wanna be a jerk about it and trivialize this because I posted it then so be it ...   Doesn't change the fact that he was denied.

[Vas Deferens]

(12-08-2015, 02:46 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: It's pretty common knowledge.   His local area in Tennessee denied him the permit.    Now if you just wanna be a jerk about it and trivialize this because I posted it then so be it ...   Doesn't change the fact that he was denied.

So not common enough to provide a link then...  Got it.

[*PhilHos*]

(12-07-2015, 11:25 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Forget about mass shootings.  They are only a very small portion of the gun violence problem.

1.  Any person who wants to own a gun must have some basic training and pass a test to get a license......I feel that if every person who owned a gun was aware of how many children died from accidental shootings, and how many family members kill each other in the heat of passion, and how many committed suicide with guns then more guns would be locked up.  Also knowing more about gun safety should eliminate other accidental shootings.

2.  Every gun has to be registered to an owner.......This would eliminate a lot of guns that are being provided by private sellers.  There are people who make a living buying guns legally and selling them to people who would not be allowed to buy them.  Also would make more people lock up their guns if they are aware of their liability for what happens with that gun.

3.  Background check for every gun owner (not when you buy the gun, but when you get your owners license).......Any history of criminal violence could prohibit a person from owning a gun.  This would require a lot of detail work because there are a lot of people who have been convicted of a simple assault in their lifetime that should still be allowed to own a gun.....Mental health restrictions are much more complicated.  We would need every psychologist and psychiatrist to maintain some sort of registry that would prohibit people from owning weapons.  This would be very tricky, but it could be done.

4.  Almost all gun violence involves handguns......Regulations regarding past criminal history would be stricter with handgun ownership.  You don't need a handgun to protect your home or go hunting.  But you do need one if you are trying to carry it in public without people knowing.

5.  Make the simple illegal possession of a firearm a serious felony.



None of these would keep any sane, law-abiding citizen from owning a gun, but they would reduce the access to guns that lead to so many problems.  Mass shootings are not the biggest problem.  Most shootings involve criminals shooting other criminals, people shooting someone they know in the heat of an argument, accidents, or suicides.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with your suggestions, fred.

It's too bad both parties in Washington don't actually care about gun control or the 2nd Amendment. Otherwise, they might agree on legislation like this like we have.

[StLucieBengal]

(12-08-2015, 02:48 PM)Vas Deferens Wrote: So not common enough to provide a link then...  Got it.

1956 is when he was denied. common knowledge = easily found.

[*PhilHos*]

(12-08-2015, 11:41 AM)Benton Wrote: Conservatives everywhere will deny this ever happened.

Video of him saying it or it never happened.

[Vas Deferens]

(12-08-2015, 08:39 AM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

Great read.  Rep

[StLucieBengal]

(12-08-2015, 11:41 AM)Benton Wrote: Conservatives everywhere will deny this ever happened.

Kinda like progressives deny what LBJ said...

[GMDino]

(12-08-2015, 03:05 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Kinda like progressives deny what LBJ said...  

From a book published in 1996....with no corroboration.

I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were true.  But its still just another thing that can never be proven but is loved and warmly accepted by some for political purposes.